Years ago I listened to JRE for a while. I enjoyed the approach that I would sum up as "I don't know, let's hear what some folks think." It felt fair and open and interesting.
But at some point it occurred, "Shouldn't at some point, if we're listening to all this that, we stop being a dumb guy who doesn't know anything and actually have opinion / challenge some of these things with some facts / solid ideas?"
But I never saw that happen, and as time went on the "I don't know" excuses just felt ... more and more insufficient, dumb by choice, or just excuses.
At some point just being "dumb" and listening to every rando person makes you susceptible to / a target of a bunch of horrible randos with bad ideas ... An open approach is admirable, but not learning along the way is not.
> At some point just being "dumb" and listening to every rando person makes you susceptible to / a target of a bunch of horrible randos with bad ideas ... An open approach is admirable, but not learning along the way is not.
I don't know what show you're listening to. I'm not a regular listener, by any means, but I hear Rogan routinely bring up things that he learns from other/prior guests. Often to challenge whatever he's hearing in the moment.
It really feels to me that people are just looking for reasons to attack him because he "platforms" voices they don't like. That was fine when he was just a comedian with a podcast, but now he has An Audience (tm), so it's Bad.
Rogan has certainly had some cranks on his show (IMO), but I'm comfortable enough with my intellect that I can listen to these (or not) without having my brain turned to mush.
My main experience with jre recently was watching his interview with Robert Lazar. Lazar has considerable reputation in the UFO community and is a fraud and a criminal (convicted pimp and sanctioned for selling illegal poisons through his chemical supply operation).
One of the thing about Rogan's interview with Lazar is he fails to ask the obvious questions - such as "what are your credentials". 'Cause with Lazar, that question already takes you to dubious territory since Lazar's answer is "I have a PhD but MIT erased my records" (and his thesis advisor went along with this?).
And this kind of left a nasty taste in my mouth concerning Rogan. Sure, his questions might be just naive but it seems more likely he's using that naive pose to avoid the mine fields of the guests he likes.
It's like I said: Rogan has had guests that I consider to be cranks. But Rogan is completely transparent about the guest list being people he finds interesting. That's not a high bar. Therefore, I don't outsource my critical thinking or judgment of character to Joe Rogan.
I do feel for Rogan here...he's doing more-or-less the same thing he's been doing since the start, but now it's "wrong", because other people are expecting him to behave in a particular way. He builds an audience by being a good conversationalist with a huge variety of different, sometimes nutty, people, and suddenly uptight folks expect him to be Walter Cronkite.
First, I think the Lazar example says to me that he's not merely naive - it takes effort to not ask someone like that basic questions.
Second, the thing with national level news isn't just that people are "uptight". It's that there are many professional and well-practiced liars out there eager for a softball venue (people less obvious than Lazar usually). These sorts of people make significant money from their deceptions and Rogan is an enabler of this stuff, making vast amounts of money himself.
Edit: and just on the question of Rogan's evolution. Just by Wikipedia's bio, I'd say he didn't start with small nuts and graduate to fronting professional conmen. Rather, he started MMA chat, built to national level and then moved laterally to interviewing people saying "hypothetically true" things about the world in generally.
Personally, I like when I can listen to an interview/podcast where the host isn't trying to 'gotcha' the guest or trying to prove how smart they are. Rogan can go on some boring/unrelated tangents, but he's one of the best in the business at letting his guests dig themselves in whatever hole they're going to dig.
I listened to that interview, with no background on Lazar or UFO-aficionados in general, and it seemed pretty clear he was full of it. I'm able to make my own decisions without the host telling me how I should think about the guest or needlessly arguing with someone they ostensibly brought on in good faith.
By his own admission he only continues the podcast because he wants to continue talking to people he finds interesting. He already has fuck you money and multiple lucrative careers so he hardly needs it as a job. He isn’t beholden to anyone and he isn’t doing it for the benefit of anyone else. It’s his platform so what he says goes. If you don’t like it, you don’t have to listen to it and you’re welcome to build your own to get your personal views out there like millions of other people have.
Kind of the thing with being in mass media with an enormous audience is that you lose the ability to just do what you've always been doing. I mean, he can, by abandoning his platform and starting over with something else, but the piles of money are too attractive.
Public figures who can heavily influence discourse and thought have an ethical obligation to not give unchallenged credence and a drastically increased audience to their nonsense. If Rogan thought that Goebbels was interesting and let him do his thing for hours to an audience of millions, he would be held to a higher standard. If Rogan thought that Ted Bundy was interesting and let him tell "his side of the story" without challenging it with the truth, he would be held to a higher standard.
This is a basic which we should expect of our society.
We can expect it but I'm not sure that means anything. I'd really like people to stop giving Tucker Carlson attention, but that doesn't seem to be happening.
The ethical obligation exists only in your own mind. Stop projecting. The rest of us are capable of thinking for ourselves and don't necessarily believe the random ramblings of a comedian or his guests.
And your hypotheticals about Nazis and serial killers are totally irrelevant. You are arguing in bad faith and trying to inflame the discussion.
> The ethical obligation exists only in your own mind.
Normative ethics really don't just exist in one person's head.
This is not a question of whether or not people can think for themselves or whether they believe what they hear, and whether he's a comedian, politician, or astronaut has no bearing on what our ethical standards should be as a society.
We should expect better.
> You are arguing in bad faith and trying to inflame the discussion.
The fact that you have seemingly never really read philosophy or considered what we, as society, should expect from public figures does not mean the argument is in bad faith or inflammatory.
It is, very simply, a reductio ad absurdum. If your position is that the "rest of us" are capable of thinking for yourselves, who we allow to influence/control public discourse/thought should be up to individuals, then surely there's nothing wrong with having Nazis or mass murderers given airtime.
If you do have a problem with this, then you draw the line somewhere, and it's just a matter of determining where. If you have a problem with it, then you believe that some discourse is antithetical to the principles of a well-functioning society, and that we have a duty to shield people from it.
The question is where you draw that line, and why "he's just a comedian" (with 11-12 million listeners who see him as having "interesting conversations" with people who are not comedians) absolves him of a duty not to use his platform to spread dangerous misinformation. Not that he does it all the time, but it does happen sometimes, and the same normative ethics apply all the time.
Do you think you would get his 11-12 million listeners to agree with you on what society should expect? Who gets to decide that?
> then surely there's nothing wrong with having Nazis or mass murderers given airtime.
You invoked Godwin's law twice. What sort of argument are you going to win by invoking Nazis and worst case scenarios? Surely the slipper slope fallacy applies here?
> Do you think you would get his 11-12 million listeners to agree with you on what society should expect? Who gets to decide that?
I'm not sure why you presume that "we, as society, should expect better" means "this applies only to Joe Rogan listeners and we need to convince them." It's a general stance on how society ought to operate, and the use of "ought" is in the "how ought one live?" question raised by ethics.
We get to decide that as society. This isn't a new concept. Society would not have advanced to a point that we were capable of having this conversation at all if "we" had not already agreed on basic principles, such as "you should not steal", and "you should not murder", and "be generally honest in your dealings with others if you want to keep your reputation". These are all inherent rules of society which you implicitly follow in order to be part of it.
Holding public figures who have a louder voice to a standard of behavior which does not actively undermine society by giving credence to disinformation isn't some horrible leap or infringement upon your freedom. It's avoiding the Gracchi.
> You invoked Godwin's law twice.
Mentioning Nazis isn't Godwin's Law. Feel free to substitute some other bogeyman who you feel giving an unfiltered platform to would deteriorate society.
> What sort of argument are you going to win by invoking Nazis and worst case scenarios? Surely the slipper slope fallacy applies here?
No, it doesn't. Honestly, I'm getting the sense that you've never engaged in any kind of philosophical discourse before, which this is sort of veering into, and throwing out the names of fallacies doesn't mean they apply.
The point is, as I said in my last post, a reductio ad absurdum. It is constructing a contrapositive. It is saying "if we follow your reasoning to its logical conclusion, this is where it leads; verify whether that's true or false, less black and white."
And it was false/shades of grey. Clearly there is some level at which even ardent JRE listeners believe giving people a platform is harmful. So the question is "what are the guidelines for when something is too much?"
My position is, as repeatedly restated, that those with a greater platform have a duty to not do harm to society by allowing crackpots to talk without being challenged, whether that's denying climate change, believing lizard people run the government, believing we are secretly in contact with aliens, taking veterinary antiparasitics on the advice of one person rather than the guidance of literally every medical organization on Earth, etc.
It has no been made clear anywhere what the position of Joe Rogan defenders is other than "he's just a comedian; you shouldn't take him seriously; people can think for themselves; he doesn't have any obligation to question them". But again, it's apparent that having Nazis or murderers on with an unfiltered platform would cross some line. So where is that line? Where are Joe Rogan defenders drawing the line of what is "too much" to air? What is the basis for drawing it there and not somewhere else?
Comedians don't qualify as "public figures" in that context. I'm not a Joe Rogan defender and don't particularly care about him one way or another, but you're obviously just making things up and trying to gaslight us. Let us know when you have a valid point to make instead of resorting to inflammatory comments about imaginary Nazis.
As for a "line", how about this. Comedians can say whatever asinine shit they like and the rest of us are free to laugh or ignore them as we please. There are no lines in comedy. Grow up.
Isn't this a "court jester" interpretation of comedy? The comedian debases themselves on all issues so thoroughly that it creates a convenient bi-directional fiction: I can ignore things that bother me, because they are just the ramblings of a clown. And so they can say whatever they want, with no requirement that it make sense (because there is no "low" they won't sink beneath).
I doubt it. High standards are rare in journalism, most will go along with high profile figures if it serves their own interests. If you want to bring Nazis into this then how about all of the practically fawning interviews that US media had with Adolph Hitler right up until he invaded France?
> I doubt it. High standards are rare in journalism, most will go along with high profile figures if it serves their own interests.
The debasement of "journalism" to the point where it applies to Joe Rogan and/or "news networks" which have actively fought (and won) court battles on the basis that no reasonable person would believe the statements were actually true, or news radio which for decades gave equal airtime to "both sides" even if one of those sides believed in a Hollow Earth does not mean that "journalism" has lost high standards, merely that the term has been horrifyingly diluted in the United States.
> If you want to bring Nazis into this then how about all of the practically fawning interviews that US media had with Adolph Hitler right up until he invaded France?
Whataboutism is an intellectually bankrupt argument. Nobody is defending those journalists, but if you're going to try to make a whataboutist argument, apples-to-apples works a lot better than "with the benefit of hindsight, we know that Hitler was bad and that Ford would have actively led a fifth column if he could have, so they were bad". You could equally say "if you want to bring Dwayne Johnson into this, then how about all of the love for Cosby as America's Dad?"
The known facts are different.
If you want to assert that a comparison to Nazis (and I used Goebbels as an example because he was principally a radio propagandist rather than Goering, Himmler, Heydrich, etc; he's the sort of person who would have seemed like a harmless marketing geek) is bad in a whataboutist sense, you would do much better to say "if you want to bring Nazis into this, then how about Speer? He wasn't (actively) involved in the Holocaust and he could have had a lot of interesting things to say about architecture and designing an imperial capital?"
What I found most odd about the Lazar interview was that if you contrast it with the Robert Bigelow interview you see that Rogan is totally capable of being highly skeptical with his kooky guests and willing to hold their feet to the fire.
The fact that he didn't with Lazar but did with Bigelow indicates to me that he favours Lazar, and considers his story to be genuine, and that kind of bias is detrimental to the interview process.
Rogan has addressed this since then saying basically he doesn't know if Bob is full of shit but knows that he (Rogan) wants to believe in aliens so much that sometimes he goes lighter than he should.
I listened to a few episodes. I concur with the assessment of Rogan as not being too bright. And not in a wholesome way. He isn't just ignorant, he's fiercely defensive of positions that are based entirely on the strength of "I'm just saying! Who can really say? Here's what I say:" no matter how many times people try to reach him.
> I'm comfortable enough with my intellect that I can listen to these (or not) without having my brain turned to mush
It's an interesting turn of phrase, because there's a very real pipeline in which people with less-trained critical thinking skills listen to Rogan -> cannot distinguish openness from endorsement -> believe Rogan is endorsing anti-vaxx voices -> contribute to an aggregate increase in community transmissibility of communicable diseases with proven neurological impacts -> said diseases turn immunocompromised people's neurons to "mush" at an increased rate, through no fault or Rogan-listening of the victims' own.
Rogan has consistently made a decision to prioritize the "vibe" of his podcast over pushing his interview subjects in a way that would make it clear that his provision of a platform is not endorsement. Sure, he challenges things as you have mentioned, but when he challenges anti-vaxx voices no more or no less than he would a guest who, say, had an opinion about hunting he didn't like, that creates a responsibility that I think does scale with audience size.
What you're talking about is nuance, and there's unfortunately little-to-no room for it in modern discourse largely because of opinions like yours which could be summed up as "if this person doesn't robotically toe the line, then the dumbs will believe things we don't want them believing."
Strategic lying is employed for the "greater good" in the context of this way of thinking frequently, the most egregious example probably being Fauci telling the public not to wear masks because privately the government believed that there wouldn’t be enough protective equipment for health care workers -- they didn't want the dumbs to panic-buy and leave hospitals vulnerable.
Not looking to get into a covid debate, just pointing out that even governments will lie to keep the dumbs from doing something they don't like, and I think that's bad.
It’s basically like treating adults as if they are children. Something that all these public health “experts” did to people for 2.5 years. They talked down to people. Acted like they knew what was best for everybody (which they didn’t).
You don’t get to treat adults like children. They are adults who might know something you don’t.
If we were able to get to the source of the 'trust science' clique, I bet we would be amazed at how uninteresting it all is. grievances about hurt feelings, mental health issues and moral panic.
It’s appeals to authority all the way down. Actual science or data (or even actual disease mitigation) had almost nothing to do with the actions “the experts” took over the last 2.5 years.
> there's a very real pipeline in which people with less-trained critical thinking skills
If this is your opinion, perhaps the problem is that society undervalues critical thinking skills. Not that an entertainer isn’t shilling in the correct directions.
If the intellect and judgment of mankind ought to be cultivated, a thing
which Protestants at least do not deny, on what can these faculties be
more appropriately exercised by any one, than on the things which
concern him so much that it is considered necessary for him to hold
opinions on them?
- John Stuart Mill, On Liberty (1859)
Perhaps the cause of this problem is refusing society the opportunity to exercise their critical thinking skills.
No matter, we can just spoonfeed everyone the received and accepted wisdom. Then there will be no need for any faculties of discernment.
The Catholic Church has its own way of dealing with this
embarrassing problem. It makes a broad separation between those who can
be permitted to receive its doctrines on conviction, and those who must
accept them on trust.
I'm not confident that censorship is the right answer, but it also seems anti-intellectual to deny that information flows through complex systems in viral and unexpected ways and assume the best outcomes will occur naturally when powerful organizations and people promoting certain perspectives over others, without concern for veracity of those perspectives.
There are people who travel the country after school shootings, comforting parents who lost children, and one of the first things they have to tell them is to brace themselves for all of the harassment and abuse they will receive from people who believe that all school shootings are false flag operations.
And those people doing the harassing are a tiny group of the mentally ill who are obsessed with these topics and lash out at anyone the media shines a spotlight on. Being a public figure sucks because you are immediately the target of sick individuals feeding their own delusions. Making them out to be representative of any audience is a mistake.
> Making them out to be representative of any audience is a mistake
I mean, I think before he got sued, Alex Jones would have actively disagreed with you. He would have taken pride of that in his audience. There’s some chance he may actually take offense to your comment.
Aside from that, why would it be a mistake if someone intentionally cultivated that? there’s been plenty of cult leaders who’ve cultivated terrible audiences. I’m not making a broad generalization about someone with general appeal like Joe Rogan, but there are some bad people out there, some self identified.
I don’t know anyone that takes Alex Jones seriously. Those whom I’ve seen online that appear to also seem to be unwell. Even Rogan is incredulous about the majority of Jones’ ramblings.
I don't think so either. However, I have seen the argument made many times that opinions originating from particular political ideologies should be suppressed (which is a solution I recognize you have stated some qualms with), because of "bad faith actors" spreading misinformation virally that is too labour-intensive to debunk.
> Scientific method
Undoubtedly: and such teaching
suffices on a subject like mathematics, where there is nothing at all to
be said on the wrong side of the question. The peculiarity of the
evidence of mathematical truths is, that all the argument is on one
side. There are no objections, and no answers to objections. But on
every subject on which difference of opinion is possible, the truth
depends on a balance to be struck between two sets of conflicting
reasons. Even in natural philosophy, there is always some other
explanation possible of the same facts; some geocentric theory instead
of heliocentric, some phlogiston instead of oxygen; [...]
- On Liberty (1859)
So you really believe that denying any and all hierarchy to knowledge is rhetorically useful? Newton's laws of motion and Phrenology equally voratious? You can have this opinion but it doesn't seem compatible with building a society. Why should a people trying to support a functioning society take such anarchic philosophy seriously?
> the truth depends on a balance to be struck between two sets of conflicting reasons.
This is a textbook strawman. Did you understand the passage quoted? John Stuart Mill clearly admits of a hierarchy of knowledge, ranging from the absolute truth of mathematics to progressively less "objective" fields (or perhaps, merely "a posteriori" truths), e.g. morals, religion, politics. Here is another excerpt from the paragraph:
But when we turn to subjects infinitely more
complicated, to morals, religion, politics, social relations, and the
business of life, three-fourths of the arguments for every disputed
opinion consist in dispelling the appearances which favour some opinion
different from it. The greatest orator, save one, of antiquity, has left
it on record that he always studied his adversary's case with as great,
if not with still greater, intensity than even his own.
Agree completely. Joe Rogan gets attacked because he is successful ( large audience) and he doesnt constrain himself to the narrow railroad tracks of a particular ideology (which would be incredibly boring).
Not sure if this is what you're pointing at, but I feel similarly about those who very much enjoy talking about new and different ideas/ perspectives, but are loathe to test out, live out, and integrate new and challenging ideas into their belief systems. It's more like, there's a relegated space in their minds for "ideas to consider and discuss, even agree with and champion," but that relegated space is removed from their core value system, which has no intention to be challenged, tinkered with, examined, and open to replacing faulty mechanisms and functions.
Seems like talking about ideas for some is more a form of amusement/ entertainment/ mental stimulation (in the same way recreational or escapist drugs can be mentally stimulating), especially if there are no outward signs & indications that a person is committed to testing out, applying, integrating, and even replacing formerly held and inferior ideas – a process which involves a lot of trial end error, failures, humility, perseverance, and delayed gratification. It might seem open-minded and intellectual, but if across time, there's no change in belief via deeper understanding from considering new and different perspectives, that then results in outward action, then all the talk in the world about ideas and perspectives is just hot air.
Maybe that's not Joe Rogan and his loyal audience? I dunno!
It’s useful to be able to run code in a sandboxed environment.
Or, in other words, the ideas and values that people live their lives by usually work for them, to some degree. Often in ways that aren’t immediately obvious. Making changes to a working system that one relies on isn’t something to be done lightly. You can see this with a specific subset of psychedelics enthusiasts, who end up completely fracturing their ability to function in reality. Or in people who don’t have a working value and belief system in the first place and end up being preyed on by cults.
Human life is infinitely complex. None of us have it figured out, and none of us are going to figure it out even if we lived for a thousand years. What’s the biggest code change you think you can make to a working piece of software without introducing a bug? That entire piece of software is only a fraction as complicated as the human condition.
> It might seem open-minded and intellectual, but if across time, there's no change in belief via deeper understanding from considering new and different perspectives, that then results in outward action, then all the talk in the world about ideas and perspectives is just hot air.
Sure. Is that so bad? The cautionary tale on the other side of the ledger is every failed attempt to build a utopia based on theory. This sort of thing was one of the leading causes of unnatural death in the 20th century.
To be clear, I think it’s definitely possible to err on the other side as well. But erring on the other side looks like being unwilling to play with ideas at all. You need a sandboxed environment if you’re going to play with ideas, and even when an idea is promising enough that you might want to take it out of the sandbox, it’s hard to tell whether that’s because of the merits of the idea or just a vulnerability in your sandbox.
I'm all for sandboxing, experimenting, trying things out and casting things off.
What I'm pointing at are people who think they're actually considering ideas as if they're trying to better themselves or understand a situation or concept so as to learn how to integrate it into their consciousness, but really they're just seeking mental stimulation with no intent to grow or take any real meaningful action. If you make no claims to be toying with concepts for the purposes of actually implementing them, I respect your choice to do so since I know what to expect. But I'm more pointing at the types who might like appearing as if they're seriously considering ideas and how to implement them, but in reality they're fairly complacent. The easy solve here would be to not present yourself as if you're actually going to do anything with the concepts you play around with in your head for amusement, and just own up to treating all this as a frivolous mental exercise. There's absolutely value in that, and there's no shame in owning it proudly.
> Not sure if this is what you're pointing at, but I feel similarly about those who very much enjoy talking about new and different ideas/ perspectives, but are loathe to test out, live out, and integrate new and challenging ideas into their belief systems.
This sounds very much like philosophy. In general, readers of philosophy enjoy looking at many frames without privileging any particular one.
I'm one of those people who likes to entertain different ideas. I like talking with a flat earther, for example, and listening to their viewpoint on things. It's interesting and if you're not combative you get better information on the topic. It's similar to why I read science fiction and fantasy. Take an idea and run with it for a while. If someone believes the earth is flat, what would that mean? Where would that rub up against other things you think you know, and how does it affect them? With something like flat earth theory, it doesn't change me much except to warn me to be more careful to examine my beliefs from different angles so I don't end up in a sort of mental trap, but other topics might change me more directly.
I don't look to podcasts like these to make their guests conform to my beliefs, I look to them to see novel perspectives and to glean what I can from them for my benefit, and simply because looking at other perspectives in a format like this really does entertain me.
"Horrible randos" got where they were in some way, and it's certainly possible that they might have a unique perspective that might be helpful or that what they say might actually be information I need. I wonder if Edward Snowden, for example, would be classified as a "horrible rando" if he hadn't been the guy that worked for them and blew the lid off of what the government was surveilling but had only speculated about what they were doing as an outsider with his actual self as a contact in the NSA. He would be saying the same information, but his credibility would change. Which doesn't mean it couldn't be true, as it obviously was in this case. Dismissing him as someone who shouldn't be listened to would have been a mistake.
I keep a lot of thoughts flowing in my head to compare new information against and to make connections with and rate their truthiness as more information comes in. The more information the better. You don't find the truth by listening to people restate your set of beliefs every day.
how many times do you need to hear from a flat earther? its not really open minded to listen to the same dumb shit again and again. its a necessary part of growing up but it makes no sense to keep doing it. it takes no investment or skill to be a flat earther. id rather listen to people who have expended effort in a particular area.
I happen to know somebody who is a flat earther, and is heavily into conspiracies of all types, and I listen to her without being combative but with her knowledge that I doubt it is correct but I'm happy to listen if she wants to talk about it. I've done that a couple of times. She's got other issues and I think it helps her to have some listen, even if she knows she not getting confirmation of her beliefs.
But it's not really about hearing the same perspective multiple times that I'm after, it's hearing from multiple perspectives.
Bear in mind, with the Snowden example, that most people with expert opinions counter to his have legal and/or privacy concerns that prevent them from elaborating too much on the topic.
If someone is an expert in their field or has a depth of experience, I'd prefer him to be challenged by someone with a similar level of expertise. Lex Fridman does this where he tries to challenge people but can't articulate it and ends up asking "can you steelman some criticisms to what you're doing". I get it, but if you can't really articulate an argument, just keep the person talking and you'll eventually learn more.
For instance, if you're talking to a Bitcoin developer and you ask them "what about the energy use", it's just a boring question that's been asked millions of times. You likely know the answer. I'd much rather they get in the weeds about some proposal or technical issue.
That requires a podcaster that’s an expert in everything, or an interview on a super niche, super low subscriber, topic specific podcast. Odds are against both.
Or it requires a podcaster that does some research and preps questions, including soliciting questions from the guest's peer community. This is like journalism 101 stuff but because Joe is a podcaster no one has the basic expectation of it.
I think that just defined what I like about all the podcasts I listen to. Topic specific, hosted by someone with significant experience in their field.
I would much rather listen to a musician interviewed by someone with experience with recording & songwriting & making albums, who can ask intelligent questions about the craft & process & equipment. (Warren Huart's interviews with music producers are a great example.) Not some random gossip journalist asking "So what are your inspirations on this album" and "what can we expect from your tour".
For me, it's a problem of discovery, and the allure of the novel. I don't know about half these people, or topics, but I find I'm interested in them. From there, I do look for other podcasts that have had those people. I've found several topic specific podcasts from there.
I think that's why broader podcasts are popular. You don't really know the specific topic you're getting, but it's often pretty interesting, and you can go deeper from there, finding the one or few expert podcasts that talk about that topic.
I have tried podcasts like that before (Farnam Street's "The Knowledge Project" comes to mind), but I found that often the guests weren't always interesting to me. If the hit-rate wasn't high enough I'd end up unsubscribing.
Derek Sivers tried doing the reverse, his podcast feed was every interview he'd done on other people's podcasts. So he was always the guest, but it introduced me to new podcasts & hosts I'd never heard of. That's actually how I found The Knowledge Project (and I did love the Knowledge Project interview with Annie Duke, who wrote Thinking In Bets).
Edit: Guess I should link those episodes for anyone who might be interested:
Right which is fine, in which case I'd prefer to hear the person being interviewed just speak candidly and the interviewer to offer little guidance. It's a more natural conversation style, like one I would have with someone at a dinner party about their field of expertise.
Joe Rogan doesn't interview people. He might have stuff that he wants to bring up, but most of the conversation is organic which is part of the appeal I think.
> If someone is an expert in their field or has a depth of experience, I'd prefer him to be challenged by someone with a similar level of expertise.
Preparing for an interview will give you some superficial understanding, which will probably fall apart during the interview, unless the interviewer is very intelligent/curious (Sean Carroll's Mindscape and Newtons Apple comes to mind).
Another alternative would be to have people on both sides present, but I've never seen that work out. The discussion you get with hostility is nowhere near the discussion you get with curiosity.
The cigarettes company ceo keeps getting asked about cancer, it’s just a boring question that’s been asked a million times. You likely know the answer, I’d much rather they get in the weeds about <other topic>
Ignoring an unsolved and critical issue simply because it’s been asked before is odd.
If someone is pushing something with an awful unmitigated issue, hell yes they should be challenged on it.
Cigarette company CEO: We understand that our product is dangerous and believe adults should make a judgement call as to the risks. We offer a lot of products to help people quit...
Aren't you glad you wasted N minutes with that canned response? Or were you expecting a change of heart and him relinquishing the role of CEO and dissolving the company?
> If someone is pushing something with an awful unmitigated issue, hell yes they should be challenged on it.
I don't want my interviewer to be doing advocacy or "mitigating" issues. I want to listen to an interesting conversation. Not everything has to be advocacy.
I’ve always felt that in a strong episode of the Joe Rogan Experience, you don’t actually experience too much of Joe Rogan. If you’re going to do a long form interview show, part of being a gracious host is to be open to what the guest has to say. And frankly, I’d much rather that people adopt Joe Rogan’s humble attitude of “I don’t know” than cop an overconfident attitude because they think they know everything. If you want to listen to some opinionated loudmouth like that, you’re in luck because they all have their own podcasts.
> I’d much rather that people adopt Joe Rogan’s humble attitude of “I don’t know” than cop an overconfident attitude because they think they know everything.
The problem is that Joe has some really strong opinions and uses the "I don't know" schtick as a cudgel to avoid confronting contrary evidence. Look at how he responds when pushed on aliens, COVID, etc.
Thankfully he's not like that in the majority of interviews, but anything dovetailing a conspiracy is painful is listen to.
Reminds me of what Coast to Coast AM became under George Noory, too. Art Bell would occasionally offer some pushback or a sliver of skepticism towards his more out-there guests, but Noory typically let them barge ahead with their sales pitch unchallenged. (And the last few times I listened to it, it always was an explicit sales pitch of some sort.)
> I'd have thought its niche had been filled several thousand times over by podcasts.
Not at all.
I have a distinct memory in which I’m driving alone, late at night, on a long road trip. I don’t have any unlistened podcasts downloaded, I’m not in the mood for music, but it’s late and I would like to hear another human voice. So I turn on the radio. The night sky is a magical sight that implies endless possibility, so I’m not in the mood for sports radio or Dave Ramsey. I don’t know if I ended up listening to Coast to Coast AM or one of its imitators, but I found something along those lines and it hit the spot.
*That* is exactly how I discovered Coast to Coast AM in the 1990s. It was late at night, I'd listened to all I could stand from my collection of cassette tapes, and I just hit "scan" with my radio set to AM.
These days my unlistened podcast collection is large enough that I rarely get to that point. And my unlistened podcast collection is that large in part because the radio dial is a little bare lately when I hit "scan" in most of the places I'm apt to do so.
If he challenged them then they wouldn't open up. This isn't Jerry Springer. Instead of demanding he do the thing you want to do, maybe you should be doing that after the fact. If someone goes on his show and admits to doing horrendous things then reach out to them and let them know what you think of them. This guy's doing you a service by exposing horrible people and all you can do is complain.
I've listened to probably 100 episodes so far, and I don't recall being exposed to any horrible people. Do you have some guests in mind? It seems they're incredibly rare.
> But at some point it occurred, "Shouldn't at some point, if we're listening to all this that, we stop being a dumb guy who doesn't know anything and actually have opinion / challenge some of these things with some facts / solid ideas?"
Not if that's the format of the show, and the show is wildly successful.
Also: what's an example of a really good interview show where the interviewer only brings on people they agree with, or else brings on people they disagree with in order to tell them they're wrong? That sounds like a debate show rather than an interview, and it doesn't sound like my cup of tea. Reminds me of those political interview shows on TV where the host cuts the guest off to yell at them.
yeah, that's one of the things that would annoy me about him and part of peoples issues with him. Most of the time things are reasonable and cool on the podcast. Guys hanging out, shooting the shit, talking about their job/book/interests. But occasionally he'd have a guest who was pretty out there, and Rogan would just be like "wow cool!" to whatever alternate reality thing they were talking about.
The other thing that bugged me about him is he pretty much has a playlist of topics he hits on most episodes. Hunting, Jiu Jitsu, DMT, etc. It's pretty interesting the first few times but after a while it's gets a little old. I still have a generally favorable view of Rogan but I haven't listened to an episode in years. I think the controversy around him is probably a bit overblown though.
His primary goal is to be a good interviewer. He acts as a blank slate so the guest can bounce whatever their thing is they have to talk about off him.
But even so, I wouldn't say he never challenges people, especially if it's something he actually does have a strong opinion on, like MMA and fitness stuff. There's a (in?)famous episode where he interviewed Adam Ruins Everything and they had a pretty big debate over some of Adam's assertions, like the idea that alpha males don't exist, or that men only seem to be better at sports because the sport was designed for them to be better at it.
A lot of intelligence? I know there are lots of things I don't know, and I even know what a lot of those things are, but I don't know that this really takes a lot of intelligence.
Compared to a clam, maybe. I am definitely smarter than a clam. Probably.
I think the person who knows and accepts they don't know things, and more importantly will refrain from opoining on those things is more wise than the average person. Maybe not more intelligent but definitely more wise
Can it EVER happen, since he is a talk show host that must be dumb and constantly say 'Lets hear what some folks think' and bring even more people to his show?
>But at some point it occurred, "Shouldn't at some point, if we're listening to all this that, we stop being a dumb guy who doesn't know anything and actually have opinion / challenge some of these things with some facts / solid ideas?"
In my experience, the overwhelming majority of people who think they are smart and challenge "dumb" ideas with "facts" are the truly dumb people (see anyone in corporate media or government for examples of this).
I'm not going to bother digging up the clip cuz it's easy to find, but it pretty much tells you what you need to know about Rogan.
It's him talking to Joe Diaz, where Diaz is bragging about how when he was the manager at Laugh Factory he wouldn't book female comics unless they sucked his dick. Rogan asks him how many women he did this to and Diaz says a dozen or something, and Rogan starts hyena laughing like it's the funniest thing he's ever heard.
Rogan gets some great guests on, but don't be fooled by his "aw schucks I'm just a bro asking questions" act. He knows exactly what he's doing and he's a lot more predatory than his on camera character.
Something to consider before you associate your brand with him. Probably better to find an up and rising podcast.
Edit: freetime2 dug up the clip below and it's even worse than I recalled.
Have you considered that your average soft SV male feminist-type isn't the target audience for a couple of east coast comedians - who are by and large complete degenerates, and I use that term with all due respect - riffing on degenerate topics that are humorous to a significant segment of the population?
Much of stand up comedy comes from an extremely dark place, and its successes derived from relating stories about their messed up lives to an audience who for a fleeting moment live vicariously through them or find humorous the complete insanity and barbarity they just witnessed. And this type of comedy is very successful. To deny this is at best naive and myopic and at worst deliberate ignorance of the world around us.
It's not exclusive to the east coast; go listen to some Bobby Lee brothel stories on YouTube and prepare to be uncomfortable. These are real people, telling real stories about their past.
Please understand that people have different tastes; there is a large audience for this type of humor; everyone else try not to choke on your own tears laughing it up with Stephen Colbert.
You don't think that showing laughing acceptance of predatory behaviour normalises that behaviour instead of shaming it? (Apologies for going all Reddit ...)
I think it’s worth taking into account the username of the person defending the humor.
Fwiw, I have an extremely dark sense of humor and I’m not arguing in either direction when pointing out the handle. I do find Rogan problematic, however.
Wow, just wow. Rancid takes like this are exactly why we have to have strong reactions to these things.
These "jokes" are not funny, and in fact are disturbing to folks that have actually internalized and lived the fact that these "jokes" are a reflection of culture.
It wasn't a joke, Jesus Christ, and the fact that you offer that up as a defense is in and of itself telling.
All the HNers coming out to put it on record how disgusted they are with the story remind me of that Daniel Tosh clip where a heckler shouts "rape is never funny" and he goes "it's not... but wouldn't it be funny if someone raped [the heckler]?" and everyone laughs.
It's like watching people get offended on the behalf of babies over some dead baby jokes and then lecturing each other on a forum.
I'm generally fairly ambivalent about Joe Rogan. I will listen occasionally if he has an interesting guest, and I feel a lot of the outrage about him is overblown. But I agree this is pretty disgusting.
Diaz’s whole shtick as a comedian is that he tells these off the cuff, crazy, somewhat believable, but always totally fictional stories about himself. They’re always super offensive, and paint him as a sort of greasy criminal/mobster.
So this clip alone isn’t really enough to come to any conclusions.
That would be truly awful if the stories he told were at all true, but without additional evidence I’m inclined to believe that they’re nothing more than a comedy routine.
The story in this video is offensive for sure, but in context it also wasn’t really all that taboo to make those types of jokes back when this was recorded.
I don't think it's very controversial to point out that kind of shock story-telling was less taboo 12 years ago.
I think this comments section demonstrates it. TFA is a pretty uninteresting retelling of their experience in Rogan's studio. Yet the top HN comment is pearl clutching over that 12-year-old Diaz clip that has nothing to do with TFA and all of HN is going on record to be tough like Scruff McGruff on raunchy stories.
And did you guys, like, see what Joe did? He laughed at it. Like a hyena.
In 1955 the casting couch stuff was common place and acceptable, at least in some circles. In 2010 not so much, but still acceptable to make jokes about. After the “metoo“ movement, it’s a lot more taboo to joke about.
Trying to diminish something said in earnest by later claiming it was a joke is definitely a technique that can be used to gaslight.
But right now we’re talking about a comedian who’s essentially recording himself performing. It’s quite obviously different.
It would be silly to assume a comedian is telling the truth during a performance, and absurd to claim said comedian is gaslighting when he later explains that he was joking.
No, you just have to be a fan so you can pick and choose which problematic bits you claim and which you disavow. No matter that they change over time, or the general cult of personality allows people to think Joe is "unproblematic" at least at stretches of time, even though it's easy to find constant, repeated indicators of his actual character. It's really just amazing the parasocial relationships that even HNera fall for and have zero outside perspective on.
Or it’s a wholly accurate representation of Joey Diaz’s act.
However, that doesn’t have to change the fact that if his comedy’s content (true or not) is offensive to you that you have to like it, accept it, pay to see it…etc.
that video is 12 years old. As far as I can tell every episode back then was a bunch of wasted/high comedians talking sht to an audience of basically themselves
We should take into account the amount of time he spends being recorded, the frequency of the incidents, and the trends of the incidents over time. I think most everyone has said something wrong in the last 12 years. If it happened 12 years ago and hasn't happened since, then I'll give him a pass. If it's a repeating thing, then I'll judge more harshly.
I was referring to Joe Rogan laughing at the story. I'm not going to judge someone based solely on their reaction to a story being told to them 12 years ago.
You don't even have to go deep into the archives to feel uncomfortable with this whole world's treatment of gender issues. Directly from this article:
>At a long desk in the big main room sits an attractive nurse. She offers us an enhancer of B12 or NAD+, through a shot or an IV.
>I get a shot of NAD+, which is supposed to be good for energy and metabolism. NAD stands for Nicotinamide Adenine Dinucleotide, and I don’t know what the + is. (Actually, I don’t know what any of it is, but the nurse said she takes it, and if you saw this woman, you too would ask for a shot of whatever she’s on.)
What are we supposed to take away from this? Is this nurse actually trained for this? If so, isn't the author completely dismissing that training because the nurse is attractive? If not, isn't Rogan basically just hiring a model to pump his guests full of unknown drugs? Neither option is great. And this was written by the VP of Communication for Substack and is approved by Rogan. This isn't some unauthorized look behind the scenes. This is what they want to advertise. It just gives me the creeps.
Well no, the way I read is quite literal without anything misogynistic - if a person is saying that they personally take X to affect their body, then the appearance of their body is some (weak but still) evidence about what effect X has, and the decision of whether you want to imitate their actions is influenced by whether you want to look like they do, whether the results they're getting seem worth imitating. The author was apparently considering that personal experience as a user of that product (and the visible outcome) was more relevant than whatever some specialist would have read about it.
Like, for an example of the opposite gender, if someone you trust says they did a particular treatment to fix male pattern baldness, then it seems reasonable to put some weight in their personal experience and how their hair looks after the treatment, especially if you don't trust the official descriptions/PR/advertising claims, then even small amounts of anecdotal but real evidence might seem more valuable.
What you describe is fundamental to advertising. Your specific example was literally a decades long advertising campaign, "I'm not only the Hair Club president, I'm also a client."[1]
I'm not going to buy a pair of shoes just because Michael Jordan wears them. The shoes aren't the reason he was good at basketball and there is no reason to believe this nurse was attractive because of these injections.
> If not, isn't Rogan basically just hiring a model to pump his guests full of unknown drugs?
> Nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD) is a coenzyme central to metabolism. Found in all living cells, NAD is called a dinucleotide because it consists of two nucleotides joined through their phosphate groups...NAD exists in two forms: an oxidized and reduced form, abbreviated as NAD+ and NADH (H for hydrogen), respectively. [0]
It's worth noting that NAD+ is well-known. Artificial supplementation I'm not so sure about, but it's inside you already. I...somehow doubt they're just injecting raw NAD+ but I suppose it could be?
Cyanide is also well-known and probably inside me already and yet I wouldn't be happy with someone injecting it directly into me.
I don't really care about the specifics of what they are injecting. I am objecting to how they are pressuring people, perhaps unintentionally, in the moment to accept the injection of a substance in which the injectee admits they don't understand. It is especially ironic considering Rogan's various comments about vaccines. Thousands of doctors can tell me that the COVID vaccine is safe and I am supposed to doubt them. One nurse tells me NAD+ is safe and I am supposed to believe her.
> I am objecting to how they are pressuring people, perhaps unintentionally, in the moment to accept the injection of a substance in which the injectee admits they don't understand.
I am just guess of course, but I am pretty sure anyone able to achieve a CEO or VP title of a well known internet media company probably has the ability and determination to say the words “no thank you” if they don’t want something injected into their body when asked. I am neither a CEO or a VP of an internet media company, but just a normal dude, and I have no problem telling someone “no”.
Honestly have really reached that place where HN commenters feel that we have to protect wealthy and successful adults from big bad podcasting boogeymen?
>Honestly have really reached that place where HN commenters feel that we have to protect wealthy and successful adults from big bad podcasting boogeymen?
Have we reached the place in which empathy must be conditional? I can feel bad for people who are put in an uncomfortable situation regardless of their level of success.
Angelina Jolie might have won an Oscar, have hundreds of millions in the bank, and was able to turn down his advances, but I will still feel empathy for her for being the target of Harvey Weinstein's sexual harassment. Rich and successful people are still people.
> Have we reached the place in which empathy must be conditional? I can feel bad for people who are put in an uncomfortable situation regardless of their level of success.
Empathy…is that what that was? See I took it as someone calling Joe Rogan a bully and belittling two successful intelligent adults as being effectively too simple and stupid to realize they were being bullied. Frankly, that’s far from empathy…that’s elitism.
> What are we supposed to take away from this? Is this nurse actually trained for this?
This a nurse not a metabolism researcher, she might know a fuck ton about NAD+ but it wouldn't be because she's a nurse. Most medical professionals (especially nurses) are trained on the delivery of medical care, not necessarily the ins and outs of supplements.
Is that supposed to make the situation better? I believe there is an inverse relationship between this person's knowledge of NAD+ and the creepiness of Rogan having her offer it to guests. Can this person speak to why someone should get this injection or answer questions about the side effects or potential negative interactions this could have with other drugs? I think that is basic knowledge a qualified nurse would normally have when administering care. Not having someone on site to speak to this would make Rogan's offering of the injections creepy in my opinion.
CBD has way more interactions than NAD but I don't expect my barista to be able to know all of them off the top of her head just because she's selling me a cookie with it in it.
It's a nurse, who's giving you a shot of you want it of a supplement that may or may not do anything.
The author wasn't a mystery to me. I mentioned her by her title. Misogyny isn't limited to men. Many women who run in male dominated worlds such as tech and comedy will often use misogyny as a shield to let the men around them know she is one of the cool ones.
This is not an accusation against the author's character. Like I said in my original comment, I don't know what she is trying to say with that comment. Although I guess that is its own accusation. Maybe the VP of Communication isn't great at her job if I don't understand what she is trying to communicate.
Yeah, that line stood out to me as well in exactly the same way. From reading it I think besides the "I'm one of the cool ones" effect she's doing a bit of if by whiskey. Even when she's criticizing Rogan et all she does it in a way they're likely to just be even more proud of.
So one clip tells you everything you need to know. Do you judge everyone this way? One mistake and their whole character is defined by that?
Do you live up to that standard, or would someone be able to find some damning evidence of some dark side of you?
Is it possible that people are messy, not always consistent in their behaviour, that they have bad days? That they haven't thought everything through, that they get caught in the moment and regret it later?
Ah well that makes it ok I suppose. Was he also a much younger man back then and he couldn't have been expected to know better? That usually excuses a lot too.
If there was a single clip of me giving zero pushback to someone talking about sexually preying on dozens of women, even as a "joke", I would hope that my peers judge me accordingly.
My degree is in neuroscience. People aren't consistent. The self is mutable. That doesn't mean we shouldn't hold each other to standards? We're intensely social creatures, the opinions of others has incredible transformative power (positive and negative) on our behavior.
Rogan has had opportunities to apologize for the clip or change his behavior. He has not.
Apologizing is (unfortunately) a trap for a public figure in this modern era, it basically never helps, as its viewed as an admission of wrongdoing by your enemies,(who will bring it up at every opportunity going forward) and weakness by your allies who supported you.(who will not support you again if something new happens as they viewed the time they spent prior wasted)
For someone complaining about the lack of nuance between too black or white you sure are being binary abour this. If someone says a mildly sexist remark, sure - grey area, could be a mistake or it could be they're a dick. But if someone says they support Hitler's ideals that's not just a mistake you can overlook.
An anecdote like that would be a great opportunity to ask Diaz if he had reflected on the way he had acted and felt remorse, or if he would want his daughter/sister/spouse to be treated that way. Podcasts can sometimes be an excellent venue for having heartfelt conversations about difficult topics. What a shame.
I feel like you'd have to be pretty deep into silicon valley progressive culture to actually ask this instead of presuming that people have the capability of coming to that conclusion on their own. I would assume that someone would laugh at just how absurdly awful it is.
Better take: Joe Rogan has an uncanny ability to make people think he's just a bro asking questions and uses that to get people to admit to truly horrendous behavior, free of judgement, for his profit and your shock.
Seriously, what do you expect him to do when someone says something like that? Immediately end the broadcast and summon the police? What exactly do you think shows like this are for?
>Seriously, what do you expect him to do when someone says something like that?
Instead of "hyena laughing", he could maybe go, "Wait, wait, you actually did that? That's how you hired women? That's pretty fucked up, you know that, right?" and then start having a tough conversation about it.
I don't really care what they would prefer, that's simply the more decent thing to do. It also speaks volumes about the audience itself if they don't wanna hear Rogan "just asking questions" about that subject.
You think that condemning them is the right way to go, rather than being nonjudgemental? The former will make them shut up. The latter will get them to open up and hang themselves with their own words, as he's proven time and again.
I would have hoped that my comments around growth, along with the fact that I have not explicitly said that they should be condemned, would suggest to any reasonable reader that I am not arguing that they should be condemned.
In point of fact, it is perfectly possible to ask hard questions without being judgmental. It's objectively wrong to deny employment to a woman just because they won't blow you, but if Rogan is as skilled of an interviewer as so many people paint him out to be, then surely he is capable of approaching the subject with tact. Give your guest the space and the comfort to feel open with discussing their past experiences and how they may view them now.
If, however, they end up feeling shame and shut up, well - that's on them.
Providing an uncritical lens and an approving audience doesn't encourage someone to change their behavior. Congratulations, we've been shown that the guy is an asshole. He also got a chance to promote his product to people who actually like that product, and arguably given an entire ecosystem that can support him and similar people.
Unless Rogan is secretly operating the world's longest, most elaborate public sting operation, I don't think the "let 'em hang themselves" argument really holds water.
Not to dispute any of your points, but one of the reasons I find some of the JRE podcasts interesting is that he gets people to open up and talk about (admit to) stuff they otherwise might not. Joey's comments are repulsive, but it's a good thing we now know what kind of person he is.
Not sure if that's a net positive overall, but it's something to consider.
Even if that’s true, Ken White’s Rule or Goats applies: “[s]lightly paraphrased — for this family newspaper — the rule states: If you kiss a goat, even if you say you’re doing it ironically, you’re still a goat-kisser.”
Maybe I'm getting off on a tangent here, but I have two daughters and I truly don't understand the idea that it's completely fine for sexually-degrading jokes to be made about every single woman except my wife/daughter/mother. If I feel that I'm free to make those kinds of jokes about every woman except the few closest to me, then I am essentially granting that same agency to every other guy, leaving my own kids open for those same degrading jokes from others. It's a double-standard, and our wives/daughters/mothers are going to see that. To me, that's a really shitty thing to do as a parent; we should be leading by example.
And that's without addressing the fact that Diaz' comment is potentially rooted in truth...
> If I feel that I'm free to make those kinds of jokes about every woman except the few closest to me, then I am essentially granting that same agency to every other guy, leaving my own kids open for those same degrading jokes from others.
In my experience (from observations) most of those people do not think the way you do, and if someone will say something like that to their daughters/mothers they will want to just fuck him up.
> It's a double-standard, and our wives/daughters/mothers are going to see that.
They see that already pretty clearly I think. Unfortunately that's the world we are living in, patriarchal world where by the law all genders should be equal but in reality men make more money than woman in same position, leadership positions are dominated by men, if a woman had a lot of partners some people will call her slut but in case of men they call him playboy etc. Double standards are everywhere around us.
Anyone I know that followed Rogan usually begins to take on the I'm a victim to things that don't affect me persona. Whether it's those "uppity stupid women", or gays and trans "getting more rights than us". It's the usual toxic masculinity soup that's easy to drink, but poison nonetheless.
In general people aren't keyed into what falls under programming into rightwing extremist views. The formula is simple: make an argument about something that doesn't really matter, make it convincing by cherrypicking the "facts", and glossing over the inconvenient ones - then make it feel pressing and relevant to the audience by citing a [usually exaggerated] example of how this has affected some poor-mans life. It's a process that relies on ignorance, while setting off parts of the brain that lead to attentive behaviour - the exact realisation that facebook also made, hence why they significantly favour anything that gets the "angry" like-response.
Joe Rogan isn't alone in this of course. Talk-back radio does it, Reddit does it, 9gag does it - no matter where you go on the internet you'll find a place where you can be angry and scared about something that doesn't affect you one bit.
As for the media companies and personalities pushing this: yes they know.
> Anyone I know that followed Rogan usually begins to take on the I'm a victim to things that don't affect me persona.
Don't people on the left do this too, though? I mean you don't have to look much further than the comments on this story. Joe Rogan is a podcaster - nobody has to listen to him if they don't want to. And I get that he has a wide audience, but the entertainment that other people choose to consume ultimately isn't a very big concern for me and how I choose to live my life. And yet look how controversial the comments are on this fluff piece about what it's like to visit his studio for a day.
The operative problem is that the ecosystem he is nurturing does, in fact, show up at our front doors. Literal physical anti-trans violence is something I have personally experienced, and it came from a group of people spouting Rogan-esque nonsense as justification for what they were doing. Ignoring Joe Rogan does not solve the problem.
I am a victim to things that literally physically affect me that are caused in part by Joe Rogan et al. creating a narrative that violence against me and people like me is justified and/or funny.
The parent implied that Joe Rogan listeners were especially prone to to “taking on the I'm a victim to things that don't affect me persona”. I was just pointing out that this is by no means unique to Joe Rogan listeners or the right wing - I’d say it’s just basic human nature really. I also felt a particular sense of irony that the comment was being made in response to a rather benign fluff piece about the show: in my opinion a lot of the outrage about Rogan is overblown and the mere mention of his name seems to whip people up into a frenzy - and I wanted to point that out as well.
Whenever someone is bashing a particular group of people for exhibiting a certain trait, I think it’s worth questioning whether that trait is really unique or unusually common in that group. Many times it is not, and it is just our biases that make it seem that way. And just in general I find that it’s unproductive to make disparaging comments about large groups of people.
I do regret saying "people on the left". I used it as a counter-example to the parent comment which mentioned "right-wingers", but if I could amend it I would probably just say "people in general".
With regards to holding people responsible: I don’t know - I think it’s ok for people to have and express opinions about things that don’t affect them personally. I think where we often fail is in maintaining a healthy perspective and open mind about things - but on the other hand I don’t think it is my place to tell other people what they are allowed to get angry at or how much they are allowed to care about something. But I am all for open dialogue and questioning people about their beliefs, respectful debate, etc. - which I guess is my version of "holding people responsible".
It’s called the political horseshoe - but it’s exceedingly overweighted on the right wing in the USA.
Being external the USA helps provide a reference point that people inside the USA often lack.
However the key difference in my point is that people shouldn't be made to feel as if they are victims to things that don't actually matter - it's verging on propaganda.
I agree that the US has an unhealthy addiction to sensational journalism. And while I agree that it appears to be worse on the right (e.g. "stop the steal" and the ensuing capitol riot), I also find that it's so prevalent in leftwing (e.g. coverage of the Trump/Russia scandal [1]) and even "mainstream" media that it's not really worth trying to frame as a left vs. right issue since it's just what the bulk of Americans are consuming at this point. And I'm not even sure what can be done about it - as you mentioned elsewhere people are actively choosing to be scared and misled by heavily-biased journalism.
> people shouldn't be made to feel as if they are victims to things that don't actually matter - it's verging on propaganda.
I agree with you in principle here, but one issue I have is who gets to decide which things "actually matter"? I think that if you and I were to compare things that actually matter to us, there might be some irreconcilable differences.
Reflexive heel-digging is indicative of your priorities, i.e. people you don't disagree with aren't conspiracy theorists. This topic is well covered territory and to touch further on the examples I've given: Facebook's own admissions to weighting the angry reaction 5x more than likes is, again, not a conspiracy theory.(1)
Also politically what I've written doesn't come under "left wing", it actually doesn't come under any political wing. Trying to turn this into some left/right wing disagreement is only a distraction. Indeed if you're feeling challenged in your views, then maybe the Internet isn't for you.
What you wrote is a often repeated line from left leaning institutions and people that follow them. I don’t disagree with you but I do disagree with the narrative you’re following.
Everyone fucks up. All of us. That's a basic requirement of existence. The difference is how we react to our fuck ups, how we grow. Talking about a past experience like that, and then "hyena laughing" while moving past it like there is nothing wrong tells me that there is next to zero self-awareness and no effort to better themselves.
That's untrue. There are scores of impressive comedians, many of them women, with zero history of sexual assault or grotesque manipulation. Maybe you're just really drawn to the rapey types. Lots of men are. Many of them Rogan fans.
Hunter S. Thompson was able to interview Nixon, despite a kind of hatred he held for the man that was nearly blinding.
If you want to get people to let their guard down, be agreeable. Draw them out. Smile and nod. Let them hang themselves with their own words. That's a journalistic skill.
If you just want to be angry at them, well, write a letter. Yell at them at the phone.
With that in mind, is he there to 1) Let his guests know how much he agrees or disagrees with them? 2) Get them to say whatever and find out who they really are?
That's not at all what happened between Rogan and Diaz. Diaz tells the story of the time he borderline raped a woman repeatedly to the extent she became depressed and defeated, and Rogan laughs along like it's hilarious. Diaz returned to the show afterwards and the furor about it, to the extent there was, was not raised by Rogan after the podcast, but by would-be Rogan-cancellers.
It's fine if you like and listen to Rogan. Maybe he's grown since then. I think it's less fine to pretend like bad things didn't happen, aren't bad, or that Rogan is a journalist luring his friends to hang themselves by confessing misdeeds.
I don't listen to the guy at all, he seems like a vaguely credulous meathead, but I guess it works out for him.
You should watch or read someone like Hunter S. Thompson interview people he despises. He got his yucks on with Nixon, and this is a guy who purportedly trained his dog to savage a cloth dummy at the word "Nixon." You smile and laugh and let people hang themselves.
Similarly, I've heard the most shameful and shocking things from people you wouldn't guess, because I am told I have a very non-judgemental demeanor. Father Confessor jokes have been made, and I faintly smile and raise my eyebrows, and then people tell me about drinking a full steaming stein of their own urine. I've heard worse, far worse. People like to unburden themselves.
Ah, and here is the crux of it. For you, to judge means you must express it. You have to let people know about it! It's not real unless you shout it from the rooftops, is it?
And therefore, if someone doesn't judge -> scold right then and there, why, there's no judgment at all.
I think "don't make sexual assault part of the interview" is a good virtue line. Even "don't make jokes about sexually assaulting employees" is good praxis, if it's a joke.
so there's definitely no reaction ever that anyone would ever be disgusted by you with, you're a perfect individual with no vices whatsoever
it's not like rogan was the one asking someone to suck his dick, if anything he exposed someone else
plus, why is laughter painted as agreement? it's a mechanism of coping with ridiculous circumstances. i'd probably laugh out of that whole conversation becoming super awkward
Whether or not you like Joe Rogan, I think there’s something significant about how far they’ve come with so little.
They don’t have many employees. They don’t take much time to produce shows. They don’t have countless assistants to schedule logistics. They keep their operating costs modest. And yet their shows reach a mass audience.
I respect how a small team has kept onto their autonomy and continues to grow and be in the headlines constantly depending on what was discussed. They just push content into the world and the world reacts to it.
Truly, it is incredible that a sitcom star from the peak of network television and who hosted one of the first major reality television gameshows and the early years of the MMA rise has managed to parlay that tiny bit of fame into a podcast listenership of 12 million.
If only the rest of us could do so much with so little.
I think the overpolished and analytics-driven media personalities left a vacuum for an authentic voice to fill. Someone would have filled it, and it happened to be Joe. It’s not like someone sufficiently motivated could repeat his success trajectory, part of it is always being in the right place at the right time too.
His prior fame undoubtedly helped him get off the ground, but if you think the show's success coasts purely on his earlier fame, I'm afraid to say this is a story you're telling yourself, seemingly in part, to make yourself feel better.
A podcast doesn't stay relevant with a large and loyal audience unless it's actually good. To pretend like JRE is a continued success purely because he was on TV before 1) ignores the countless podcasts started by people far less famous than Rogan was when he started which have failed to take off and 2) sounds like a cynical, resentful thing you tell yourself feel better along the lines of "well, if I came from where Rogan did, I'd be just as successful."
Whatever you want to say about the reasons anyone tuned in to begin with, it's transparently unfair (and betrays your own "issues") to not offer a balanced perspective which includes the need to acknowledge the obvious which is that Rogan's success just might be _also_ due to the fact that he is a good interviewer, that he has good guests on his show, that he's able to spark interesting conversations, etc.
The idea that his TV stint and MMA fame makes a listenership of 12M an automatic thing is just laughable.
I was replying to a comment about *how small Rogan's staff is.*
You appear to have missed that context and have launched into a passionate defense of his talent, behavior and personality. As a bonus you've dipped into the ad hominem well at least twice.
If you think it's impressive that somebody very famous can make a podcast with only three employees, ok. Go ahead and be impressed.
Yes, let’s ignore he became a successful star first. That was obviously just handed to him. Success breeds success only if you have some actual ability. Otherwise he’d be a one hit wonder. At one point he really only did have as much as anyone on HN, and probably even less.
He's not that different to a top-tier Youtuber or influencer of which there are hundreds who have managed to build successful content businesses with very small staff.
They are all just standing on the shoulders of the platforms and content creation tools which allows them to affordably produce and distribute high quality content to billions. Something which has never previously been possible.
I remember Joe podcasting back when there were like 3 podcasts available. He came out shortly after the iphone, the first platform he was available on was probably iTunes. He's been doing it a long time where many have failed.
> I remember Joe podcasting back when there were like 3 podcasts available.
According to [1], JRE launched in late 2009. According to [2], podcasts took off spectacularly in 2004 and by 2005, every man and his dog had a podcast (paraphrasing, obvs.) Whilst he has been doing it a long time, he was relatively late to the party.
I have no evidence to back it, but it felt to me like there was a podcasting boom around 2004-2006, and then I stopped hearing about them until a revival circa 2014, when everyone and their mother was listening to Serial.
I don't think this is right. The podcast and YouTube space is incredibly competitive. Everyone has the same shoulders to stand on.
Nobody watches top tier YouTubers, rather than others YouTubers, because of the platform. The platform is absolutely saturated with others, making identical content. It's the same with podcasts. The same guests are almost always making rounds to all the other podcasts, yet people prefer Joe Rogan over all the other podcasts the guests are on. Why?
The top tier people have some mix of personality traits, physical traits, work ethics, or talents that separate them from everyone else. That ability to be so massively separated is what should be considered "impressive", since it's provably not trivial or common.
I’m always impressed by someone getting to number one, on their own merit, because I know the reasons are extensive rather than simple. Well, except for something like OnlyFans.
The same thing that attracts so many to his podcast is what drives so many away: his lack of a political agenda. Many people find it refreshing that Rogan can talk (mostly listen) to nearly anyone without pushing his (or anyone else's) agenda on them or acting as some sort of policeman to attack those with views that various groups of people don't like.
Unfortunately in today's environment, many people (most of the ones who don't like Rogan) think it is incumbent on everyone to be a wokescold. They think that having a conversation with someone somehow grants them legitimacy or "normalizes" their views, while intelligent people with coherent, well-thought out principles understand that legitimacy is not something that is granted through proxy.
It should be pretty clear if you look at Joes career outside of the podcast. For 30 years he has been in the entertainment industry with stand up comedy, television (News Radio and Fear Factor), to announcing UFC fights.
He was one of the fist big podcasts and livestreamers before others started doing the same. Most of his initial (and repeat) guests are simply friends from these various industries.
Another question being, since those same guests have been present on many other podcasts (most do rounds for promotions), why does his podcast seem to be preferred?
He let his guests talk without trying to put words in their mouths. He respects his guests and takes a sincere interest in them. In other words, he's the exact opposite of most people in the media.
In addition to what some others are saying here, they is often used as a singular gender neutral pronoun and not a specific pronoun that excludes the others.
I use singular they all the time, especially online where people are accounts and not people.
The zoolander reference was brilliant. A lot of the criticism of Rogan reduces to "the wrong kind of people" getting wealthy, asking questions, having opinions, leading conversations.
The Zuckerberg interview he did was probably the most important interview of the last few years, and to go 3hrs with anyone with a calm and consistent interest and disposition is a direct result of his level of physical fitness and world class expertise as both a comedian and martial artist.
There is a mind required for comedy that is transferrable where instead of making people laugh, you can use it to disarm people and get them to open up and share what they believe. Rogan's interview style is very closely related to comedy but just slowed down to a Tai Chi level, where there is an arc in the discussion where most people run out of neurotic energy after about an hour, and then instead of gotcha'ing them, he is just accepting, and then nudges them toward challenges, but not to catch them out, but to get them to be honest. The effect is beautiful.
There is a lot of middlebrow anxiety about him, but I don't think it has standing unless it's from someone who is also pro-level funny, fit, and competent in their discipline.
> The Zuckerberg interview he did was probably the most important interview of the last few years, and to go 3hrs with anyone with a calm and consistent interest and disposition is a direct result of his level of physical fitness and world class expertise as both a comedian and martial artist.
You should think about the tens of thousands of journalists who have done the same thing for a hundred years without being fit, comedians or kickboxers or whatever.
To be able to do a 3hr interview without neuroticism requires stamina that you can only learn by having become very good at something with practice. When you look at journalists who can't do that without centering the conversation back on themselves or using confrontation, it's pretty clear that competence in a physical discipline makes the difference.
Interesting comparison to journalists though. Who would be a peer as an interviewer? Maybe George Plimpton, Christine Amanpour, Oprah Winfrey, Charlie Rose, or Dominick Dunne?
Personally, I respect physical competence, techne over episteme, experiment over theory, performance over criticism, predictive power over post-hoc explanation, etc. It's more of an orientation than an idolatry.
>Interesting comparison to journalists though. Who would be a peer as an interviewer? Maybe George Plimpton, Christine Amanpour, Oprah Winfrey, Charlie Rose, or Dominick Dunne?
That's a good list. I'll add more, because I think you're being pretty dismissive of journalism and the art of the interview that has been born from journalism:
Terry Gross, Diane Sawyer, Mike Wallace, Larry King, Bob Woodward, Lesley Stahl, Bryant Gumble, Bob Costas, Walter Cronkite, Barbara Walters (who I personally don't love but who I can't deny has excelled at the art form and created many of its best elements), Jane Pauley, Gwen Ifill, David Frost, Audie Cornish, Kara Swisher.
There are many, many more I'm forgetting. Interviewing has long been a stable of radio and television broadcasting. Not all broadcasters are journalists, but there is significant overlap.
The two greatest living interviewers are Oprah Winfrey and Howard Stern. Stern isn't a journalist per se, but he is a broadcaster and he's absolutely as good as anyone who has ever done it (other than maybe Oprah, who has the ability to interview anyone and make it tantalizing). And I think Joe Rogan is a good interviewer and has absolutely improved over the years (as one would hope if you do something for hours a day for over a decade), but he doesn't even come close to either of them.
And yes, interviewing is a physical act and an act of stamina, but I'm not sure what your point is here. Most journalists who are adept at the interview (and I'm sticking with primarily broadcast interviews here because written interviews, while equally important, are a different beast that often require far more stamina and time than doing a televised or audio broadcast of an interview) have that level of stamina, or more.
> The two greatest living interviewers are Oprah Winfrey and Howard Stern.
I would put Terry Gross miles ahead of both, and believe Stern's skill as an interviewer laps Winfrey several times. But I'd put nearly everyone on your list ahead of Winfrey as well.
I'm curious: why did you call out Stern as "not a journalist" but not Winfrey? Neither one of them bears even a passing resemblance to a journalist as far as I can tell.
I think for radio, I’ll agree Terry Gross is one of the best that has ever lived. I love her so much and have so much respect for her. But for me, I still think the spectacle of Oprah, her awareness of the right moments, the right beats, the drama, makes her the best interviewer alive. I'm a media nerd and a former journalist, and I rewatch her interview with Lance Armstrong every few years because it’s just such an amazing interview. Terry Gross is amazing, and I’m not trying to take anything from her. And she’s had her dramatic moments with subjects, for sure. But Stern and Oprah have that added performer element that puts it over the top and into another level. One of the reasons I think Mike Wallace was such a good newsman and broadcaster was because of his background as an actor and game show host. He had the sensibilities for what made good television.
As for why I call Oprah a journalist and not Stern? I mean, Oprah has worked in news. She has research teams for her various shows and projects. Her talk show could definitely delve into tabloid stuff (especially in the 1980s, though she pulled back before the format became deranged in the 1990s), but like Donohue (a legit newsman), but she started working in local news when she was still in high school. She’s the definition of a broadcast journalist. For every tabloid story she’d get into (which often were often not far removed from what you’d see on Dateline or 20/20 or 60 Minutes or other newsmagazine programs), she’d also do deeper dives into reporting highlighting stuff that people in her audience didn’t know about. She'd visit places and talk to the people. And yes, she had research and fact checking teams on her show. Oprah is a journalist in my mind. She’s a populist and her audience target is different than the typical reader of FT or even the New York Times or people who regularly listen to NPR, but she’s a journalist all the same.
Stern, in comparison, is a DJ and a talk show host. He was a program director and disc jockey who then got into shock jock stuff at the height of that era and then created a genre-defining morning show. He reads headlines but he doesn’t do news. He might break news based on his questions, because he’s incredible at his job, but he’s not trying to tell a larger story or narrative. He's not going to go to a town in America that didn’t have Black people for 75 years to talk to residents and try to get to the heart of the racism. He's not going to go to Auschwitz with Elie Wiesel. What he can do is make the subjects he interviews reveal more about themselves than they planned. He can make people comfortable enough to show who they really are. And his technique is the same technique any good journalist would use, but he wouldn’t call himself a journalist and neither will I.
The line between broadcaster and broadcast journalist is thin, to be sure. And someone like Terry Gross or Charlie Rose are definitely more on the “journalism” side than Oprah usually is. But Oprah is still trying to tell broader stories. She’s still doing research. Stern is much more akin to Johnny Carson or Mike Douglas, Merv Griffin, David Letterman, etc. Oprah isn’t Diane Sawyer, but she’s closer to that direction.
Both are great and I don’t think Stern not being a journalist hurts him or his credibility or his work at all. If anything, he doesn’t have to be held to the standards of journalism or whatever. Whereas Oprah has been rightfully criticized for having people on her shows over the years spreading pseudo-science.
To put it another way, if you lie in an interview with Howard Stern and he knows you’re lying, Howard might push back on your or make fun of you a bit, but he’s going to let you go on an lie. But if you lie to Oprah, and she knows you’re lying, she'll push back. She's usually not combative, but she'll dig in more. And if she finds out you lied to her? After she defended you? She'll eviscerate you in front of a live studio audience, alongside media critics from the top newspapers in America, as part of a discussion on truth and ethics and fact checking. She'll admit her own culpability and faults, she'll take her lumps, and then she'll cut you to the core in front of God and everyone.
You seem unaware that many, many journalists and interviewers do indeed spend several hours interviewing their subjects....that is then significantly edited down. That good interviewers (and their staff) have spent many, many hours doing background research to prepare for the interview.
If you think Joe Rogan is an impressive interviewer, your mind will be blown away by someone like Terry Gross. She appeared on the Tonight Show and Fallon showed a photo of a book Gross had read before interviewing the author - stuffed full of notes, page corners turned down
Exactly what my comment I spent way too much time writing was trying to say.
And as you say, people like Terry Gross and Oprah and Diane Sawyer and Mike Wallace and even Howard Stern (who is one of the best ever at interviewing) actually do research ahead of time. And the interviews are far better for it. Having an off the cuff conversation is fine. Having awareness of the person you're going to talk to, familiarity with their work and with what they are about, is even better.
Watching Oprah interview Lance Armstrong remains a master class in the art form and her ability to interview such a wide range of people about so many things is just incredible. Likewise, Terry Gross does what she does so well -- and is one of the best audio journalists of all time, that it's honestly comical for Rogan to even be in the same sentence.
Charlie Rose was one of the GOATs as well, and the exact opposite of Rogan: you could immediately tell he'd done a super deep dive on the interviewee and the subject at hand before the interview ever started.
I think Letterman has been doing some interesting stuff lately in the gray area between those extremes. He's a humble funnyman that keeps things a little loose, but you can still tell he's done some prep and is quite well-read.
Howard Stern. I wish Rogan had his level of intelligence and insight into the human mind. Howard is also much funnier and knows how to keep a show from turning into a sleeping aid.
No matter how hard you practice, you can’t fake funny.
Hardly. Howard Stern gets views by shocking his audience. He's raunchy and sadistic, either asking people about their personal sex lives, or bringing on a disabled person in order to humiliate them. He's not pursuing any intellectual aims. There's no comparing what Stern and Rogan are doing.
> When you look at journalists who can't do that without centering the conversation back on themselves or using confrontation, it's pretty clear that competence in a physical discipline makes the difference.
It’s not clear to me at all, to be honest.
> Personally, I respect […] experiment over theory
Yet your theory above on how competence in a physical discipline confers ability to conduct interviews for longer periods without becoming neurotic seems entirely unsubstantiated by experiment. Are you aware of any studies that back it?
Dick Cavett has forgotten more about the art of the conversational interview than most people have ever known. Intelligent, perceptive, and witty. I'll take his 40-year-old youtube clips any day of the week over the wannabe everyman that Joe Rogan pretends to be.
Look, I don't have a problem with Rogan (I grew up watching NewsRadio and Fear Factor), but this isn't even the best interview with Zuckerberg. That would be when Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg interviewed him at the D Conference back in 2010 and he sweat through his hoodie. And no, they weren't even challenging him or pushing back on him super hard -- he was just that unable to answer basic questions about privacy.
Swisher has had him on her podcast multiple times since then and also had very good, very substantive interviews with him.
Side note: Zuck has clearly invested many, many, many hours in media training over the last decade or so and it has paid off. He's still far from a good speaker but he's so much better, it's honestly impressive.
I agree that they don't need to be confrontational necessarily. However, most platforms of any importance will have made contentious decisions that are worth being pressed on. So I think a good interview will press on those decisions (or lack of), and naturally become confrontational.
And there’s a couple of ways of going about that, depending on the guest and the interviewer. If you’re Chris Wallace interviewing Bill Clinton on Fox News, you can just start an argument because Bill Clinton loves arguing with people and will rise to the challenge. Other times you have to open people up with kindness.
Is this actually a belief that Zuck is so unbelievably powerful that he doesn’t deserve the courtesy of a less confrontational interview, or just a rationalization for the fact that you don’t like him very much and would prefer to see him humiliated?
Confrontational interviews are a difficult style to do well, and probably not a great style for Joe Rogan in particular. If the guest is smarter or at least more quick-witted than the interviewer, the interviewer can be made to look like a fool.
Also, it’s very easy for that style of interview to make people close down and rely on rehearsed talking points. If you really want to know what someone thinks, you need to create a sense of emotional safety for them to open up. Especially these days. You can’t make the interview feel like an interrogation. Even literal interrogators will tell you that.
It’s not really a belief at all, more of a half-baked thought. I could be swayed in either direction, but I’ll continue to ramble a bit:
Sure, a light-hearted chat with easy questions can of course make a person open up, but when it comes to the billionaire CEO of one of the most powerful companies in the world (or some high-powered politician, or whatever), is it ethical to donate what basically amounts to a PR job (answering softballs and getting to seem relatable while ignoring problematic topics) that is framed to viewers/listeners as an interview?
“Yeah, I heard something about Facebook and privacy that sounded bad, but I saw Zuckerberg on Joe Rogan talking about hunting elk and smoking weed, he seemed like a relatable guy. I’m sure he tries his best and wouldn’t betray his users on purpose.”
> I guess it’s a matter of opinion whether or not making people sweat is the mark of a good interview.
Exactly. Part of the reason Joe Rogan is so huge is that a lot of people are sick of the current interviewing model, where some sneering journalist (who usually lives in Brooklyn) asks a bunch of leading questions in an effort to humiliate his guest by luring them into a contradiction.
Well-adjusted people don't regularly enjoy watching others get humiliated. They'd rather see an interesting conversation between interesting people, which is exactly what Rogan gives them and exactly what the traditional media does not.
An impressive combination of gate-keeping and fanboyism that I think perfectly illustrates why so many people dislike Rogan and his devotees. God forbid someone "without standing" dare to criticize the man himself, right? Especially if they aren't as (checks notes)... fit as him?
I like Joe Rogan but calling him a world class comedian and martial artist is not right. He doesn't compete in BJJ and he always was a middling comedian.
Indeed, and they hand out Netflix specials to anyone who can fog a mirror these days so it's probably not a useful measure... Maybe I should just do one.
He sold out Madison Square Gardens and headlines along with Dave Chappelle. He's not one of the top comedians of all time in my opinion (Dave Chappelle, Chris Rock Louis CK, Bill Burr), but he is wildly successful for a comedian.
He was a state champion in Tae Kwon Do when he was younger and is a black belt in BJJ. He's very experienced in multiple types of martial arts. He doesn't compete because he's 54 years old but he still trains every day.
>The Zuckerberg interview he did was probably the most important interview of the last few years,
You mean of all interviews done anywhere? Surely, that's hyperbole.
What exactly came out of that interview that's worth noting other than that Facebook throttled a Hunter Biden story (which we already knew had been done across social media platforms)
One of the things I appreciate about Joe Rogan is that, unlike other podcasts I've listened to, he actually lets the person on the other side talk.
There are several podcasts that I will occasionally listen to where the host of the show repeatedly talks over whoever else is on the podcast with him. Usually the brunt of it is a "sidekick" or co-host.
I get it, it's your show, but like, if someone is talking, let them talk!
Maybe it's the longer format that gives that "breathing room." No matter: I can listen stress-free without getting upset that someone is saying something and he keeps barging in.
I think this is why he is so popular, 90% of the media is all saying the exact same message and if you deviate from it you get cancelled or your show/platform dropped. Americans are not dumb, they don't like being preached to and talked down to which is why Rogan's show and guests are so popular as many of them are saying things which are not heard on any of the other media outlets.
That being said having watched a few JRE podcasts he definitely has his dogma that comes out in many episodes, here are a few: "hallucinogenics are good for expanding consciousness", "Most social media is a bad echo chamber", "tribalism is bad(and is the cause of most of todays issues)", "censorship is happening at a mass level", "medical solutions are not a one size fits all fix", "ufo's are most probably real" etc.. He definitely comes across as someone with a open mind and seems to be a life long learner but I think some of his ideas are somewhat out there. I would not classify him as someone who is dumb, which is strange as alot of HN folks seem to peg that on him.
> I think this is why he is so popular, 90% of the media is all saying the exact same message and if you deviate from it you get cancelled or your show/platform dropped. Americans are not dumb, they don't like being preached to and talked down to which is why Rogan's show and guests are so popular as many of them are saying things which are not heard on any of the other media outlets.
I'm really confused by this stance, because the top podcasts are never swarmed by one specific perspective. On my apple podcast the podcasts on "top episodes" lists for me both the nyt daily and ben shapiro in the same top 5. If I filter to news podcasts only, they're the top 2.
media being MSM like NBC, NY Times, CNN, etc. Podcasts and even the popular ones are longtail so they will have divergent messages than the MSM players. But Joe Rogan has more viewers than some of the smaller networks top shows and that puts him squarely in the field of MSM, and those players mentioned before are all seeing ever shrinking audiences and JR is seeing his audience expand and he has 100x less of the support and administrative staff than those networks do, it must infuriate them to no degree and I can see why they would want him shut down.
I'm confused about your claim that 90% of MSM is the same if I'm pointing out that just briefly going to top podcasts points out two radically differing MSM taking the top 2. That doesn't sound like 90% saying the same stuff to me. Especially if you consider Joe Rogan himself to also be MSM. I don't even know the definition of MSM then or how you can say 90% of them are anything.
But to address the point I think you're making, just because two shows have different viewpoints doesn't mean they're not the same- 'Fox and Friends' and 'The View' might have opposing ideologies, but they're the same show.
You're shoehorning "MSM" to mean "non-podcast media I don't like".
It's completely dumbfounding to compare staff sizes of a podcast to worldwide journalism institutions. It borders on bad faith. "They" want them shut down? Who is they?
> At a long desk in the big main room sits an attractive nurse. She offers us an enhancer of B12 or NAD+, through a shot or an IV.
There is one and only one indication for parenteral cyancobalamin (B12) administration and that is deficiency thereof due to inadequate production of gastric intrinsic factor or a disease of the terminal ileum. Period.
It's hard to take anyone seriously who would encourage podcast guests to receive vitamin B12 injections without documenting deficiency. The evidence on this subject is widely available; so if Mr. Rogan gets this so wrong, where else are his impaired reasoning processes taking his 11M followers?
> There is one and only one indication for parenteral cyancobalamin (B12) administration and that is deficiency thereof due to inadequate production of gastric intrinsic factor or a disease of the terminal ileum. Period.
You are aware of a study of B12 injections in non-deficient individuals indicating no benefit? "No evidence" is not the same thing as "evidence against".
So you want an authority, rather than to make your mind up yourself?
Watching an interview where both participants are less than perfect challenges you to think for yourself.
> where else are his impaired reasoning processes taking his 11M followers?
The same place everyone is being taken by all the media we consume.
It is ironic, but watching someone like Alex Jones forces one to think. The real problem is how do we learn to filter when an “authority” is speaking or writing?
> Watching an interview where both participants are less than perfect challenges you to think for yourself.
if both participants are dead wrong, how is that any good?
i mean, would you take programming advice from two guys who have no experience in making actual software?
does that actually force you to "think for yourself" or just cause other listeners with no experience to become misinformed, and those with real experience tear their hair out in frustration?
Whilst I agree unreservedly about the indications for b12 and it’s complete lack of medical benefit in any other situation, I’ve also experienced sections of the population that definitively require (… not medically, but like present to their GP) injections on a quarterly basis.
Specifically Australia’s elderly Hungarian and Eastern European population, it seems to be literally something inbuilt in them to come in and demand it. They swear by it. And as much as I absolutely hate tipping the hat to rubbish complementary and alternative treatments, or which vitamin supplementation has to be amongst the definitively most wasteful, it is simply not possible to convince some people
While it is kind of absurd, to be fair, B12 has documented useful benefits for people that aren’t deficient. Also, your body eliminates any B12 it doesn’t use in urine, so not really any risk of overdose.
There are many good/great podcasts out now that don't hesitate to conduct 1-3 hour meandering interviews with interesting people on a regular basis. I don't recall seeing that before JRE. So even if you never listen to his show, I think he has improved the media landscape.
I've listened to a few episodes of JRE at the request of some friends and I kind of get it but I also don't get it. Joe ask the "dumb questions." The questions you would ask if you as a laymen were sitting in front of a Nobel Prize winning scientist like if Star Wars lightsabers are actually possible and a lot of people find that entertaining and I get it.
But people have this weird way of taking things they like and not only rejecting criticism but making it their whole identity. Joe can do no wrong and if people dislike him it's because they don't "get it" and they are just being soft.
Joe also likes to deflect by saying "I'm an idiot don't listen to me" which hey that's fine but if you're going to ramble about how the moon is made of cheese then say "don't listen to me" but then bring on a guest who is going to talk about how the moon is made of cheese; the line that is being pushed is pretty clear even if it is unintentional.
I agree with all of your points. But it's worth pointing out that most "public intellectual" interactions become a form of Kabuki theater. It might be a friendly interview, where you can guess what questions are going to be asked and what the answers are. Or it might be an antagonistic debate, where the two sides are yelling talking points at each other. But it's rarely surprising.
What's interesting about Rogan is you can often find theses talking head types getting easily flummoxed by normal questions that are outside of the ritualized interactions they're used to. Watch Rogan talk to Shapiro about his criticism of Colin Kaepernick, or him asking Bari Weiss why she calls Tulsi Gabbard an "Assad toady." He seems to like both of them (perhaps even to the poitn where both are friends), but his simple questions end up making both of them look completely foolish. And because he's genuinely curious and doing it in a non-aggressive manner, it doesn't get lost in the furor of a antagonistic debate format.
Again, I agree with your criticisms of him and could add several more myself. I think it's one of those situations where in the valley of the blind, the one eyed man is king. The traditional forms of public debate are so shallow that a curious guy just asking random questions can short circuit most of the folks there.
As a disclaimer, I have not listened to his show extensively.
But while he may be genuinely curious the sum of his questions and his guest choices express a thesis and for avid listeners seems to become a program of study that leads somewhere.
It seems like it's always freshman year of college at the JRE and you're learning all this fascinating stuff that shows you the world is larger and more mysterious than you imagined, but he never quite gets to sophomore year when those mundane details are filled in and you see why all the quirky, obscure things remain quirky and obscure.
I guess on some level it's not his job but since he has had this success I do wish he would take it on, to give the listeners more protein with their sugar.
In most topics in life we are all at Freshman level and it would be good to remember that. Experience and expertise in one place often leads to overconfidence elsewhere, we see this repeatedly whether it is Elon buying Twitter or Jordan Peterson weighing in on topics outside of clinical psychology.
Just to be clear, I was using the college years as a metaphor rather than a specific knowledge level.
I'm fine with dilettantes (I am a proud one) and recognize that there are some real polymaths in the world, but it creates a tricky situation for the show. A lot of people who lose a specialized debate try making their case directly to the public and the ones who survive become quite good at it and know what they need to do to get on the right podcasts.
The ones who won, who might have the better ideas, are bisy working in the field and if they communicate to the public at all it is without the polish of someone who makes their living that way.
That is, of course, a well known problem in science communication.
> What's interesting about Rogan is you can often find theses talking head types getting easily flummoxed by normal questions that are outside of the ritualized interactions they're used to. Watch Rogan talk to Shapiro about his criticism of Colin Kaepernick, or him asking Bari Weiss why she calls Tulsi Gabbard an "Assad toady." He seems to like both of them (perhaps even to the poitn where both are friends), but his simple questions end up making both of them look completely foolish. And because he's genuinely curious and doing it in a non-aggressive manner, it doesn't get lost in the furor of a antagonistic debate format.
If you think that's impressive, listen to Terry Gross's interview with Hugh Heffner.
> Joe ask the "dumb questions." The questions you would ask if you as a laymen were sitting in front of a Nobel Prize winning scientist
This is exactly why he’s so popular. Most people are laymen. Joe doesn’t have a research team coming up with optimal talking points. He’s a regular minded guy asking regular questions. He achieves depth through the sheer length of interviews.
Joe is playing the same role as the youngest child at the Seder. It's a popular format because it serves a genuine human need. If no one asks the most basic questions, no one gets the most basic answers.
Well sure, but if the youngest child is primarily querying the schizophrenic uncle and taking his answers with complete credulity, then pawning them off on millions of other credulous people, it’s reasonable to feel that there’s a serious downside to such an act.
The thing about asking the schizophrenic uncle about things is that it becomes clear they're schizophrenic, even if the child asking is buying it all.
A while ago I read that lots of people were upset with Joe Rogan for having Alex Jones on his show. I really didn't know anything about Jones other than what you see on cable news and Rogan I'm fairly neutral on. So I found an Alex Jones episode and played it. Jones came off as being entirely unhinged. It was not flattering at all. They were basically winding Jones up and then letting him explode.
The Alex Jones episodes are well known for being the wildest comedy ever aired on JRE.
I think he sees himself a lot in the tradition of Stern and Opie and Anthony, where some outrageous stuff is cool. He doesn’t see himself as a media outlet but a guy who wants to have fun and push weird shit. Obviously it’s caused him trouble with the anti vacc guys he had and he’s sort of normalised his show a bit, but still I think he sees himself in that tradition. He’s not looking to be Dan Rather.
IMO I think this is the root of both the valid defense and the valid critique of Rogan. He doesn’t seem to properly account for the fact that having the # of followers he has is itself a signal of credibility. It’s very hard to overcome that with offhanded “I’m a normal guy don’t listen to me!” remarks. I don’t feel he properly informs his users of just how fringe some of his guests are, and in fact once they’re on his show they’re actually not fringe (in the social proof sense of fringiness).
Of course it signals credibility. I suppose you can argue that the entire effect of social proof doesn’t exist, but I’m sure there are better uses of that groundbreaking knowledge than commenting on HN!
So then why don't you do everything Joe Rogan says? You should be powerless before his tremendous social proof. This is the kind of "I'm special smart, the other side are sheeple" discourse that is pointless.
If I found Rogan entertaining enough to listen to him frequently, it probably would affect my behavior. Instead, I have other people who I pay more attention to and whose social proof probably does unduly affect my decisions :) Lol I’m not the one here claiming to be immune to it!
Everybody is using heuristics to navigate an extremely complex world, most of the heuristics are pretty good (which is why they persist), but they also have corner cases.
Social proof is one of those heuristics that should be taught in school so people would learn to discard. In fact multiple pieces of cognitive bias should really be taught in school…
I understand your point and partially agree with it - I do think Rogan has learnt something from the vacc debacle. I’m just trying to explain from what I think is his POV on the matter.
I am pretty confident that the appropriate place to distribute revolutionary new scientific models based in factual evidence isn't the joe rogan experience.
Research shouldn’t be locked up behind paywalls and in ivory towers. It should be public knowledge and lots of basic questions should be asked about it.
Sure. And a growing portion of research is made available through places like arxiv. The government is also pushing new regulations to make research publicly available when funded by the government, which is a dominant force in grant funding. This is wildly different than presenting findings on JRE.
And, in general, revolutionary new scientific ideas are targeted at scientists rather than the lay public. Ideas like new models of the solar system don't tend to take hold because the public thinks they are cool but instead because they become inevitable within the scientific community. Being less able to go on JRE and talk about how awesome ivermectin to a massive listener base is isn't going to limit scientific breakthroughs in the future.
I didn’t suggest killing competing theories. Only pointing out that this analogy is missing some fairly important characteristics. You know, the ones people are actually worried about.
It's not an "act". For better or worse, you're hearing the real Joe Rogan. He would have the same conversations with guests even if the microphones were switched off.
Doing so is essentially a hallmark of a society. Laws against fraud, for example, are among the oldest in existence, despite fraud overwhelmingly targeting the most credulous among us (for obvious reasons). This is a good thing, actually.
Nope! It implies that yes, someone should think of the credulous people.
I don’t believe censoring Rogan is justified/wise/useful/etc. — even if it were it’d still be illegal anyway. But does that mean I think we should just throw credulous folks to the wolves with snarky remarks like “won’t someone think of the credulous people?!”
We should think of the credulous people, and take society’s threats against them and their threat to society seriously.
This statement is not even false. One is inevitably a layperson in most things, even at one's job (like Rogan is at interviewing interesting people), but also usually not layperson in at least some things.
Depends on what the topic is and who is in the audience? You can't be a layperson full stop you can be a layperson at something, it's not applicable without a topic
I think you're underestimating the power of dumb questions to an extent.
Like, I wholeheartedly agree, he doesn't achieve good interviews by the quality of his questions.
Except... that he kind of does, in a weird way. Experts on the show are happy to use those questions as a launching point to correct whatever incorrect assumptions he had in asking it.
He's very good at getting people to open up and talk. Perhaps dumb questions play a role in that? Perhaps they make people feel comfortable by validating their expert status in the room or something, I don't know. But I do know that it seems to work. I also know he's a comedian. Comedy is fundamentally a weirdly manipulative art form... You carefully craft a set of jokes and then practice over and over again to make it feel like an organic, albeit funny conversation. Every little pause, intonation, turn of phrase, it's all intentional. So, being that he is a practiced comedian, it's possible some of that interview style is pretty intentional too.
There is a lot to criticize of Nassim Taleb, but your statement in unkind, as he did excellent work. I would say 1/3 of his audience, can't stand him because they don't like his style, but it's ultimately their loss. The other 1/3 don't like he is somewhat external to academic circles.
I think [1] is a balanced evaluation.
"...In short, Taleb resists categorization. If I had to pigeonhole him, I'd call him an anti-guru guru. That is, he mercilessly bashes other gurus, pundits and prophets and warns you not to fall for them. He depicts himself as a brave, lonely truth-teller in a world of fools and frauds. In so doing, he becomes a guru himself, with a cult-like following...
...even if you question what Taleb is saying—and you certainly should—he forces you to examine your own biases and assumptions. Yes, he can be irritating, but so are many of our most original thinkers..."
I think he's a manipulative asshole. He's a one trick pony who picks a random group, makes false claims about what they believe, which are obviously wrong, and then invites the reader to feel smarter than his target group by pointing out why the obviously wrong idea is wrong.
Bullshit along the lines of: Did you know statisticians believe the normal distribution curve is infallible and perfectly describe real world scenarios? This actually false. Therefore, statisticians are stupid, and you're smarter than them for understanding otherwise. And I am smarter than everyone for having pointed it out.
He doesn't force you to examine your own biases and assumptions. He tricks you into believing that you have done so and have come out wiser. He's just yet another fool and fraud in a pit of fools and fraud.
>But people have this weird way of taking things they like and not only rejecting criticism but making it their whole identity. Joe can do no wrong and if people dislike him it's because they don't "get it" and they are just being soft.
I see what you're getting at but I think you're putting the cart before the horse here. JRE has become a highly politicized target and criticism(or praise) of the show is a proxy narrative for half-dozen other issues. This is just more identity politics spilling over into more facets of our lives.
>Joe also likes to deflect by saying "I'm an idiot don't listen to me" which hey that's fine but if you're going to ramble about how the moon is made of cheese then say "don't listen to me" but then bring on a guest who is going to talk about how the moon is made of cheese; the line that is being pushed is pretty clear even if it is unintentional.
I think the diversity of perspectives is a valuable part of the show. But it's a balancing act with many pitfalls.
The trend of people forming deep tribal identity around political affiliations and institutions. Speech then is first and foremost performative signaling of your in-group affiliation to the good group or the evil group. At least that's the lense any speech or action is looked at within identity politics.
it would be dishonest to ignore the fact that "contemporary identity politics" kicked fully into gear as a direct response to #Occupy—and its objective was & continues to be successful
> It would boost his popularity with half the country
idk, i feel like the majority of trump supporters already listen to JRE. Those that don't support Trump would hate Joe giving Trump the time of day and therefore risk losing those listeners while gaining none. I don't see an upside to Trump being on JRE.
the other half of the country (world?) would hate Rogan for having Trump on. imagine if they agreed on anything. imagine if they made each other laugh. the "you're giving a platform for HATE" rhetoric would be deployed in full gear. Rogan would undoubtedly ask tough questions, but no matter what he were to ask, it would never be "tough enough" for many. I'm not a big JRE guy but I would be very interested in watching a Trump episode of the show—however, I think Rogan made the right choice by not opening that can of worms. at least, at this point in time.
A fundamental of the human condition is we don't know who is lying and who is telling the truth. You can get a pretty good hit rate assuming everyone is lying, but the misses with that strategy are catastrophic because the rare truthful and productive people are dynamos.
What people really want is someone who, as best they can, is a bit humble and a bit curious. A note which Rogan hits a lot better than most. It is irrelevant whether he is right or wrong, that isn't what people are looking for. They can't assess that and frankly most people don't prioritise the truth that highly. If they want to be told what is right and wrong they can go watch cable and get told by the likes of government officials, or the clergy. Neither are popular. People want to know what opinions are floating around.
From that perspective, Joe Rogan does no wrong. He is fulfilling a role that people are desperate for. It is easy to overestimate the confident and noisy moralisers who worry about normal people hearing things that are not true - they aren't actually popular. That class of people are the sort who staff censorship bureaus.
To add to this, Joe Rogan is higher quality questions than, eg, CNN anchors while having on heterodox specialists, eg Robert Malone.
Joe Rogan also has lengthy interviews with major figures like Mark Zuckerberg or Elon Musk, which aren’t done by traditional networks like CNN.
I’m having trouble taking people who don’t see the value in that seriously — because it seems obvious to me why people would want a diversity of information.
> Joe can do no wrong and if people dislike him it's because they don't "get it"
In my experience, it’s the opposite with Joe Rogan. His fans seem pretty casual, it’s the people who don’t like the show who are extremely outspoken about it.
Exactly. It seems like a common pattern - I often wonder how much a rise in popularity is because of those that like it vs. those that are somehow angered by it.
I’ve heard Jon Stewart do this. He puts all this effort into political commentary and when he got called out on something said “Hey my show comes on after crank yankers!” Oh so when you’re wrong now you shouldn’t be taken seriously, I see.
I'm curious where Jon Stewart ever said he should be taken seriously? On his comedy show I mean. In his testimonies to congress and whatnot, he doesn't do the comedy thing.
I'd also say the same thing about Al Franken - he was pretty deliberate about "de-comedying" or whatever it was he called it when he went into his first term in the Senate. I will admit that that would not have been as much work for him as it would be for Stewart.
They're probably referring to the Crossfire interview (which is widely credited with getting the latter show cancelled). He basically complained about the lack of depth on Crossfire, and when questioned about his own show's lack of depth he basically just said "It's a comedy show".
It's sort of a nuanced issue, since a lot of people took The Daily Show seriously in that era anyway. The difference is, of course, that Crossfire and its ilk were/are unserious in subtle ways, and seemed meant to be taken seriously. I'll leave it up to you, the reader, to decide which space Joe Rogan's show lives in (I actually couldn't tell you, never having seen it).
An ancillary point Stewart made was "the Daily Show is on Comedy Central" (per memory, this was before peak Daily Show popularity, so it was well-known but not famous) as opposed to "Crossfire is on CNN."
Presumably people watch CNN for different reasons and with different expectations than they watch Comedy Central.
Tucker Carlson's rebuttal was that Jon Stewart could book political guests that wouldn't come on Crossfire, so he had a journalistic duty to ask hard questions.
Which... felt kind of weak to me. For profit media is for profit, and both Crossfire and Daily Show were beholden to the bottom line, and had to calibrate their behavior against that. Edward Roscoe Murrow, they were not.
PS: My favorite Stewart line from that interview remains (paraphrasing) "Crossfire isn't theater? Tucker, you're 35 year old man wearing a bowtie. This is theater."
Why is he invited to give testimonies to congress, do you think? This is not something I have the opportunity to do. It's, presumably, on the basis of his comedy show? He doesn't want his comedy show to be taken seriously, but he wants himself to be taken seriously on the basis of that comedy show? What's the difference?
Congress routinely invites individuals to "testify" for propaganda purposes. It's all for show. Remember when they invited Tipper Gore to testify based on zero actual qualifications?
They are comedians. They are entertainers. Why do Americans hold their entertainers in such high regard?
These people may put some thought into what they say. And some of them may be smart people. So sometimes they have good points. And sometimes they don't. Sometimes they are right. And sometimes they are wrong. But you should just laugh. And if they give you a new perspective on something, find out more reliable source. Why are you taking jokes seriously?
It's been going on at least since electing Ronald Reagan president in 1980.
And it's not just the USA, see Ukrainian President Zelenskyy, whose resumé previous to being elected president consisted of being a politically relevant comedian.
The fact that he turned out an extremely solid wartime politician came as a massive surprise to me. At the very least, whoever is in charge of his image is doing a phenomenal job.
I mean, actors excel at "image", that's kind of their job?
I saw someone make an argument that the rise of celebrity politicians is about television. See also JFK, kind of one of the first "celebrity" politicians in the age of TV -- not that he was an actor first, but still.
Yep. America used-to have wheelchair-bound president 100 years ago, for Christ's sake. Now, it would be completely impossible. Presidents have to look good, or at least healthy. Even the senile Joe Biden is actually looking pretty crispy.
FDR and his administration went to great lengths to hide the wheelchair. They even made a panel for the resolute desk to hide FDRs lower body when seated. Imaged mattered then as much then as it does now.
Wheelchair users have been elected to Congress in recent times. It's not impossible that one could make it to the Presidency. We just don't have enough data points to draw firm conclusions about how that impacts electability.
FDR (not quite 100 years ago) was wheelchair-bound but very cagey about it. And FDR was hardly fifteen years in the grave before Nixon lost a TV debate to Kennedy by looking pasty.
The fact that he's a war time president at all is a massive minus. He ran on a platform of letting the Russian minority get more autonomy - the previous government's slogan was literally military, language, faith - and then launched a major operation against the break away regions more or less as soon as he got in power.
Jon Stewart was publicly saying what everyone wanted to say. The only person he could get ahold of was Jim Cramer, but you can FEEL the anger. That anger wasn't just Jon, it was your average Americans.
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Jon Stewart was consistently getting named in polls as the most TRUSTWORTHY news source, and a lot of it was for this. As a comedian he was pointing out the ridiculousness of the politics, and he wasn't doing it because it was a republican in office.
Because Jon Stewart was saying what most people WANTED to say.
I can't find the skit, but during the Iraq war the US lost _PALLETS_ of money. Think about that. PALLETS OF MONEY. Jon Stewart did a skit where he made fun of it because how ridiculous is that? You send literal pallets of money and don't put enough security on it to prevent it from disappearing?
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There's this idea of court jester's as being the only people who could safely say certain things. I'm no historian so I can't speak to that historical accuracy, but that's how I view Jon Stewart.
People are aware that he's a comedian, and they're aware that he's highlighting very specific things. But given the news media then (and today), there's a reason he was considered by many people to be the most trustworthy news source.
When Jon made those statements about only being an entertainer, he was defending himself from attacks by the media, not by your every day American people. That statement in particular, put in context, was him showing how ridiculous it was for these organizations to be attacking him.
If people consider you the most trustworthy news source, you have a responsibility to live up to that trust, which saying "I'm only an entertainer" is abdicating, he was saying "I'm only an entertainer, why are you trying to hold me to the standards of news media?" Well, because millions consider you a trustworthy news source, that's why.
> There's this idea of court jester's as being the only people who could safely say certain things. I'm no historian so I can't speak to that historical accuracy, but that's how I view Jon Stewart.
I believe that's exactly how Rogan's audience views him too.
I am not a fan of Rogan. But this seems pretty similar. The difference is just that you disagree with Rogan's fans and agree with Stewarts, ok...
The difference is just that you personally think Stewart is generally more trustworthy than Rogan? If so (and I generally agree), why didn't Stewart accept that responsibility instead of trying to abdicate it with "I'm only an entertainer, you can't hold me to the standards of news media". Don't both Stewart and Rogan have the responsibility to in fact be held to the standards of news media, when millions consider them trustworthy as news media? I think both of them are irresponsible and acting in an untrustworthy manner if they say "I'm only an entertainer, I shouldn't be held to the standards of a news source", while being considered a trustworthy news source by many. How do we know if someone is trustworthy as a news source? By evaluating them as a news source, not letting them get out of it with "I'm just an entertainer, you can't hold me to that standard".
One wonders if the you believe the negative of this holds.
If everyone believes you're an adulterer you have a responsibility to cheat on your spouse?
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In addition, this is why cherry picking is frowned upon. Jon Stewart was responding to the ridiculousness of CNN, Fox, et al, running hit pieces on him, and they started running hit pieces on him because they were showing up in polls as less trustworthy than Jon Stewart.
What you're basically claiming here is that because he's more trustworthy than CNN, Fox, et al, he has a responsibility to trustworthiness. AT THE TIME this was happening, the general sentiment was the opposite. That the trustworthiness of CNN, Fox, et al was SO BAD, that even a comedian, whose job it is to take things out of context and stretch the truth for a laugh, was more trustworthy than CNN, Fox, et al.
This was all going on during the second Iraq war, where Bush and Cheney was giving speeches about mission accomplished atop aircraft carriers with the banner "Mission Accomplished" while we were still sending more troops.
It was clearly a political maneuver and Jon Stewart was making fun of it whilst CNN, et al, were mostly not calling them out. But people aren't _stupid_, they knew it was ingenuine. That Jon Stewart, a fricking comedian, was the only public forum really highlighting how disingenuous it was is WHY he was getting voted as more trustworthy in polls. Jon Stewart was pointing this out.
And you know what? The people were fucking right. When the 911 responders were getting dicked who was it that fought for them? It sure as shit wasn't CNN, Fox, et al.
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Without that context, what you're doing here is cherry picking, and I suspect it's because the current "social politics" surrounding joe rogan are causing younger people to let it bleed over onto Jon Stewart.
No, becuase someone thinks you've done something bad doesn't mean you have the have the responsibility to do something bad.
I think Joe Rogan encourages people to build a worldview off of things he says, encourages people to treat him as reliable news, and profits from them doing so, both monetarily and by influence over what people think. He has a huge amount of influence over what people think, based on people believing that he's a straight shooter. Then when called on whether he's doing so responsibly, whether he really is straight-shooting, he says "I'm just an entertainer, it's not a relevant question". I think it's irresponsible and manipulative.
I don't see how that has anything to do with thinking someone is obligated to kill if people believe they are a murderer, that's a ridiculous and silly analogy that just doesn't work.
I think Jon Stewart did/does the same thing as Joe Rogan. He has a huge amount of influence over what people think, based on people believing that he's a straight shooter, and he likes, encourages, and profits from this trust and this influence -- it is intentional. Then when called on whether he's doing so responsibly, he says "I'm just an entertainer, you can't expect that of me or hold me accountable for it, it's not what entertainers do". I think it's irresponsible and manipulative.
Can you be specific about how you think the cases differ?
The point is that people are not obligated, period. This obligation thing is just an attempt at trying to find fault with actions that are completely reasonable.
As for your question, I've already explained the context around Jon Stewart and I have no interest in a culture war.
> The point is that people are not obligated, period.
People? Period? If you truly don't think journalists and political leaders, among others, have a responsibility to behave responsibly with the truth and their methods, and that people are right to expect that of them and evaluate them on it...
Then I guess we have enough of a different worldview that communication is indeed difficult.
I'm not sure what makes something a culture war to you. I am a leftist critisizing both Joe Rogan and Jon Stewart. My problem with Jon Stewart is not with his politics, which I largely agree with. To me, a culture war approach is more thinking that you must pick a side and then insist those on the other side are without virtue and those on yours without flaw -- I am also not interested in that.
You've changed your stance here, before it was that someone is obligated if people believed something about them, now it's that they're obligated if they call themselves a certain thing.
One almost begins to suspect this is all a front for disliking Jon Stewart ;)
I do not in fact dislike Jon Stewart. I don't know him personally, but I am capable of critiquing people I also think have done positive things, which I think he has. It is unclear to me if you are -- that's the culture war, indeed, thinking that everyone must be either all bad or all good. I do not believe I have changed my stance at all, this is something i have spent some time thinking about and have a thing I think about it. But ok.
The worst are the ones who believe themselves to be objective as you'll never get them to consider that they have a bias. It's like the people who claim to hate drama but are always surrounded by it.
And of course you've thought about Jon Stewart a lot, that's obvious.
Perhaps a lot of people can't tell the difference between a journalist and a comedian pretending to be a journalist.
I struggled with it for a long time, without even knowing I was struggling with it. I fact-checked one of them and realized the truth of the whole comedy situation, and I've viewed them completely differently ever since.
It's a cop out. Often times he's very serious about the political points he's making, even if he packages the point in a joke. The point or argument itself isn't a joke, at all. So you can't do that but then hide behind "I'm just a comedian!" when there's a flaw in your argument.
The vast majority of new is entertainment. If you're in a deep blue area that has never voted for Trump, and you know that you'll never vote for Trump, spending hours a day reading about how terrible Trump is doesn't inform your decision to vote. It's done because you enjoy political celebrity gossip, the same way other people spend hours a day watching entertainment celebrity gossip. You'd be better off spending at least a fraction of the time learning about local races, but very few people do that. I know lots of people that can't tell you most of the people they voted for the day after a primary, but say that they're into "politics" because they spend hours reading and commenting on national news.
Stewart fits right into the political infotainment environment. His show was intentionally laced with jokes, but other than that it was very similar to the highlight of "top news stories" you'd hear on other cable news stations. The depth (shallow) was probably about the same for most news stories as well.
Stewart also, despite his claims of being just a comedian, would go on serious moralistic diatribes. Someone brought up his Cramer interview, and that's a good example. The guy clearly doesn't view himself as just a comedian there. Like Rogan, they're willing to go after and call out others as if they know more than them (whether or not they do is another discussion), but when called out on their failures they pretend they're just goofballs and never pretended to be anything more. It's dishonest.
Personally, I dislike Stewart because he's often prone to hypocritical moral posturing. He took a unflattering picture of Charlie Rangel up and laughed about his "front butt." Then a year later he took Newsweek to task for having a bad picture of Michelle Bachmann, saying that you can argue with her politics but it's never appropriate to attack someone's looks. When the only black writer on the show took issue with one of his impersonations, he yelled at the guy and cut ties with him. Now he's going around lecturing white people about how they have to listen to black people.
To be fair, he was telling that to CNN presenters who were trying to deflect his accusations that they were enabling political theater by saying his show does the same thing, missing the obvious point that CNN should be held to a higher journalistic standard than Comedy Central.
Yep, I think Jon Stewart basically invented this approach.
I believe that he in fact popularized the phrase "fake news" first, to use it to refer to himself, to do exactly this, defend himself when called out, saying "hey i'm just fake news, why are you trying to hold me to real news standards?"
I think it totally paved the way for a lot of misinformation (that now tends to, but not always, be right-wing oriented), and I think it's a mess.
It's not just Stewart, it's part of the general merging of "entertainment", "news", and "politics". But I think Stewart is a fore-runner in serving roles that are actually both "politics" (advocacy of positions) and "news" (informing as to what's going on) for their audience, while disclaiming accountability for performing those roles responsibly because "it's just entertainment" -- an approach that has been adopted by Rogan, among others.
[In case you think I am making this critique from the "right" I am most definitely not]
The last decade hasn't been kind to the people who I looked up to when I was a teen.
Turns out the left wasn't any better than the right, they could just be honest when they weren't in power. Once they were, well it's obviously your fault for holding them to the same standards they held the other team to.
This is right out of the Jon Stewart playbook. He can say he’s a “comedian” when criticized but clearly loves the influence he has a “journalist.” Great schtick if you can pull it off.
May be I am misremembering but I thought Jon always used it to mean “if I, a comedian, can ask these questions you should do better as you are the supposed expert”
We probably can’t agree here, but to me it was clear he wanted to avoid criticism by hiding behind his comedian status while simultaneously relishing the power and influence he had as a journalist.
Damn, two people in this comment section brought up some random Comedy Central late night host from the mid 2010s. I feel like this is some elaborate bit, like Joe Rogan somehow has a secret conspiracy of how to reply to that comment, and they're all gonna pop out
I'm going to take a guess... you are probably under 30, and the people who brought up Jon Stewart are probably over 35. He was pretty big (bigger than Rogan, probably) when we were forming our political opinions in high school and college, and he also blended the line of entertainment and political commentary. It's a very natural comparison. Don't be too quick to cry conspiracy.
Random host? Jon Stewart was huge, he defined political comedy for over 15 years. His audience though likely didn't overlap much with JRE due to different political leanings (well, that and age).
I, and my friends, were very skeptical of Jon Stewart taking over for Craig Kilborn but he really did a fantastic job. Think about how many careers were born on that show. Steve Carell for one. Stephen Colbert for another.
EDIT: for those who don't remember policital comedy/commentary shows were not a thing before The Daily Show. Sort of like how people forget conversational format and ajax weren't really a thing before gmail
Jon Stewart was just in the news in the past few weeks, working to get military health insurance benefits passed through the U.S. Senate. It's rumored he might run for a political office. P.S. Conspiracy theories are usually cases of apophenia, which could lead to dysfunctional psychosis.
I think there's some truth to what he says here. For some topics he actually just does let people talk. And that's fine. But there are some topics where Joe isn't just "asking questions" but is actively pushing a particular viewpoint.
The first and most obvious one is vaccines. Covid has broken this man's brain. If you go back to March 2020, his interview with Michael Osterholm [1] was actually really good. It was one of the first I saw that recognized how serious this actually was. But for whatever reasons, Joe has decided vaccines are bad and he's had a parade of grifters and charlatans on to back up that view (eg Robert Malone). There is absolutely no evidence in the world that will change his mind.
The second is all his manosphere [2] content. He really rode the wave of popularity of Jordan Peterson in particular and really gave him a platform with no pushback whatsoever. The recent rise of Andrew Tate is just the latest manifestation of this (fun fact: Tate dated JP's daughter a couple of years ago).
The third is transgender people. Trans people broke a lot of people in a way that's reminiscent of 1990s era homophobia. Bill Maher is another example of this.
So a big part of Joe's popularity isn't just a "dumb guy asking questions", it's that he pushes very normative and popular opinions.
Joe Rogan as recently as last week said the vaccine is mostly safe and saved millions of lives. What he says is that the vaccine is more dangerous to some people than the narratives and pharmaceutical companies says. And he despises how you can’t even talk about the negative effects for some people without being cast as an anti-vaxxer. You entirely proved his point.
The exact same thing applies to transgender people. He believes 100% in their ability to be treated as the gender they believe they are. But his main disagreement is pretending that it’s okay that biological males vs biological females is fair. It’s not, especially in sports like MMA which he is an expert in.
Yet by talking about it, he is cast as a transphobe just like you accused him of.
And to correct you further, the 90s were the period where gay rights went mainstream so you’re even wrong about that. That when people started understanding that it wasn’t a choice and was biological. Shows like Dawson’s Creek really humanized being gay for an entire generation. That’s when Canada made gay marriage legal.
He described Fallon Fox as "a man in a dress." Rogan's statements about transwomen are considerably broader than "I just want to talk about the impact on sporting regulations."
> Joe Rogan as recently as last week said the vaccine is mostly safe
- "How Joe Rogan Became a Cheerleader for Ivermectin" [1]
- "Fact-Checking Joe Rogan’s Interview With Robert Malone That Caused an Uproar" [2]
- "What the Joe Rogan podcast controversy says about the online misinformation ecosystem" [3]
> But his main disagreement is pretending that it’s okay that biological males vs biological females is fair.
Sports isn't fair, period. It's why there's no "under 6 foot" NBA league. It's only with trans people that people suddenly (pretend to) care.
> And to correct you further, the 90s were the period where gay rights went mainstream
- "ABC shelves Ellen" (1998) [4]
- "Why Laura Dern Didn't Work For A Year, Despite Jurassic Park's Success" [5]
- "How ‘homophobia’ denied Sharon Bottoms custody of her son in the 1990s" [6]
Examples here are legion. Homophobia permeated popular culture (eg TV and box office movies). There was progress made, sure, but homophobia was so normalized at the time. I have to wonder if you lived through this era (as I did) or just read about it.
I mean, homophobia was still weaponized into the 2000s. Many credit Karl Rove with weaponizing state ballot measures on gay marriage to win the 2004 presidential election [7].
> Dawson’s Creek
technically the coming out storyline was 1999-2000 I believe and was controversial. Roseanne [8] is probably a better example. Picket Fences ended up censoring a kiss scene in 1993 [9] and caused quite a lot of controversy at the time.
Nothing you posted contradicts what I said. Questioning the vaccine doesn’t mean that he didn’t think it was safe for most people. He even almost got the vaccine if not for a scheduling conflict.
When I said “mainstream” I didn’t mean they were generally accepted. I meant that the issue of gay rights became a topic. Some places like Canada openly legalized gay marriage without much of a protest. Gay rights infection point was definitely in the 90s and only got stronger. It wasn’t like the 80s where gays were openly mocked like in Three’s Company
Joe is an intelligent person. One of the clear signals of that is that he is willing to bring on experts and ask basic questions without being embarrassed in an attempt to understand, that also explains why he has such a general audience - for experts its a great venue to break down and think neutrally about their topic, since Joe's main agenda is to learn.
As for misinformation, the word you seem to avoid saying - you clearly don't have any problem identifying when Joe is unsure of what he is saying, so I guess you are concerned about what other people are thinking. I'm not sure your speculation about how other people think is grounds for useful feedback. In fact I'm not sure you know much at all 3 episodes in.
When he doesn't understand someone, he enthusiastically agrees. When he's hosting someone with PhD or otherwise smarter than him, he just says "ooooooh" a lot and is overenthusiastic. He doesn't ask smart questions. He asks questions his audience will understand.
He was "intelligent" maybe a few times in his life. Those are represented by the third eye on show's emblem/logo.
Somehow you seem to think asking questions that confuse people is the most effective way to spread knowledge. It's no surprise someone who implicitly believes learning is privilege for some subset of the population does not enjoy or appreciate the host of a show forcing PhD's (from all viewpoints) to dumb down their points to a general audience.
Unless you are an expert in every field of every guest, you have no room to patronize. Joe absolutely asks good questions and and receives and considers contradictory information, as any casual listener knows.
It's always something to watch people with certain types of relationships to online celebrities construct this entire illusory, aspirational set of attributes onto their e-celeb and then reverse integrate it as a part of their own internal identity effectively.
Resulting in "asking dumb questions and thoughtlessly yielding to the last authority that spoke" being portrayed as some height of intelligence.
It might say more how many cognitive assumptions you've built in the minds of people who enjoy a show with a fairly basic citation. How much mental gymnastics do you need to do to figure out why people enjoy hearing basic questions about complicated topics?
The JREs guest roster only has two flavors. Right wing and "I'd rather not go too much in depth about my politics". There were maybe 5 episodes in the history of the show where Joe is confronted with left wing talking points, and aside from the Bernie episode it was always an accident.
Notably, the one other exception is Joe calling bullshit on Ben Shapiro's claims.
The show has never invited anyone in favor of affirmative trans healthcare, for instance. But they did invite Debra Soh and Abigail Shier almost purely because they were against it.
But because the JRE pretends it's a free speech zone where no opinion is unheard, it creates a very biased view of public opinion in viewers. A division into "the woke mob" of ideologues and the "intellectual dark web" of people that are supposedly free of ideology. The show is massively contributing to what it says it hates.
He also had Kristin Beck, former Navy Seal who is transgender.
The parent post is someone who doesn’t listen to Rogan, and a perfect example of someone that casts Rogan as a transphobe because he dares to not tow 100% of the views that they want him to.
This type of philosophical fascism is what is ruining our world today.
These people are just sad man, something lacking in their lives whether it's power sex love or money they are lacking in it and the left just scoops them up into their crusade preying into their shit.
It's interesting you name two trans women who have said how much they enjoy beating the shit out of cisgender women. In Fallon's case, she boasted about fracturing an opponent's skull.
What are you appealing to here? It's one of the most extreme forms of contact sports, but it's sanctioned. Injuries are commonplace, not something trans people exclusively inflict.
And how is it related to the question at all? I am not interested in discussing if Fallon Fox is a good person, good sport or good representative of trans people. I'm discussing Joe Rogan calling her a man being indicative of transphobia on the JRE. Just like OJ Simpson being convicted would not justify calling him the slur with N.
> It's one of the most extreme forms of contact sports, but it's sanctioned. Injuries are commonplace, not something trans people exclusively inflict.
For a competitor who has grown up with the (extreme in the case of contact sports) benefit of male hormones to compete with someone without that benefit is something new, at least in this era. It makes injuries more likely ... to the competitor with the female hormone profile.
A lot of us feel that it isn't fair. Whatever the explanation, it appears to be a man beating up a woman. Because biologically it is. Sanctioned or not, consensual or not, that's not my preferred entertainment.
I didn't sign up to discuss this, but I'm very careful with people that have only started claiming to care about women's sports after this became a culture war issue. There are a lot of armchair takes that are obviously misinformed about the mechanics of HRT, and a lot of ignoring that most contact sports are already grouped into weight classes exactly because gender is a bad discriminator.
I would be in favor of sporting bodies deciding these things on a discipline-by-discipline basis, but at this point christian conservative think tanks (like the ADF) became involved and it has all just turned into such a shitshow that I don't trust anyone in these bodies to be impartial anymore either.
If you're interested in a nuanced discussion, may I recommend Mia Mulder[1]? I promise, it's not a straight up arguing for one side exclusively video essay.
I would be much more supportive if the biological differences were included along with the weight class, such that a lighter person with testosterone muscles and bones fights a heavier person with estrogen muscles and bones. That is, where the competitors are competitive. But the current ideological environment resists the inclusion of such sex-based factors, on the absurd premise that they are trivial.
Are you sure this isn't just an assumption you're making based on your "ideological environment"? How do you know? Have you done the research? Do you actually know if someone who has replaced their testosterone with estrogen retains their "testosterone muscles"?
Spoiler: It's complicated, in no way straight forward, and if you descend into the ugly guts of it you'll learn that sports were never fair to begin with, and that we'd need better bracketing systems even if trans people didn't exist to have any semblance of "individual effort" determining outcomes in sports.
> Are you sure this isn't just an assumption you're making based on your "ideological environment"? How do you know? Have you done the research?
I feel that I have direct relevent expertise ... having wrestled many boys and girls my age growing up. There was at least one girl who could and did kick my ass. But there were lots of boys I couldn't beat.
It doesn't take a biologist to make this unsubtle observation. Boys in general are considerably advantaged over girls in any kind of brawl. An environment that doesn't allow a person to learn this growing up is too safe.
Now you're talking about the distribution in cis people, but you haven't accounted for HRT. Hormones are an immensely important part of sexual dimorphism, so much so that people with an XY chromosome and complete testosterone insensitivity (CAIS) usually only find out they're not XX in their teens when they visit their Gynecologist about lacking periods.
It is very hard to maintain "excess" muscle on feminizing HRT (the body has different muscle to fat target ratios depending on hormones), and impossible to (re)build it. Someone would have to work disproportionately hard on maintaining most of their "male advantage" a year in. I'm not an athlete, but every trans person you ask will tell you that the difference in strength is quite significant. Even if I can just tell from being unable to open jars.
That aside, I really recommend you invest time into that essay. It's an interesting tale about why we have segregated sports to begin with (believe it or not, women doing sports is a relatively recent thing) and how trans people really aren't the biggest interference to the unfairness of it all.
Blair White is a hardline transmedicalist who called usage of puberty blockers "child abuse" and self-describes as "center-right".
She might be trans, but she really is on one ideological line with Shrier und Soh. I'm not sure if White would call for all transition to be banned when opportunistic (as some members of the GOP do now), whereas I have doubts about Shrier and Soh being honest about finding transition acceptable in principle, but that's really the only difference.
Are these supposed to be examples of leftists? Tulsi recently filled in as a host on Tucker Carlson's show...the same show actively peddling the Great Replacement theory (among other far-right conspiracies) to millions of Americans.
She might not be as far left as you would prefer, but there is no doubt she is on the left side of the US political spectrum. (And please don't bother wasting our time with that tired old trope about the Democrats being equivalent to center-right party in European politics. We're not in Europe.)
Your interpretation makes sense if you consider leftist to be a purely relative classification. We don't even need to look outside of the US to understand why that's not a very meaningful way to think about ideology: the Overton window within the Republican party has undergone a substantial shift to the right since the 1970s [1].
Without even loosely-defined characterizations of what a political ideology is and where it falls on our (albeit very imperfect) scale, terms like "leftism" are doomed to a future of being weaponized by their opponents, who themselves shift right and decry moderates as "radicals".
All of that aside, I'd still like to hear your rationalization for her recent appearance as the host of a far-right talk show where she, among other things, referred to the sitting attorney general's investigation of a former President's alleged crimes as one having "all hallmarks of a dictatorship". Is hosting Tucker's program an endorsement of every position he's ever espoused? Surely not. But I'd say it's a level of support akin to giving a speech at a political candidate's rally...
>that tired old trope about the Democrats being equivalent to center-right party in European politics.
This is dumb misconception, too. It is absolutely false. If anything, Europe (even if you focus solely on Western Europe -- if not, "slightly" would be "extremely") is slightly more conservative than America, especially socially. That may seem false if you look from certain angles, like social welfare, but those are red herrings (e.g., social welfare's a lot easier to expand when taxes are already very high, when your poverty levels are already way lower, etc.).
Despite your parenthetical attempt to sidestep this fact, being barely on the left side of the US political spectrum doesn't make one a "leftist". Meaning that people who consider themselves leftists don't agree with Tulsi Gabbard.
It's hard to point to a voting record as evidence of one being a leftist or not, when actual leftist policies are not typically put up for a vote in America. Her ideological score puts her in line with Tim Ryan, who is currently running for Senate in right-leaning Ohio, and is competitive because of the very fact he isn't a leftist. Despite what you may hear, not all Democrats are socialists. Far from it.
To add to your point, there is a kernel of truth in the 'the left keeps moving goalposts' meme [1].
In present internet discourse, 5-percentile radical leftist opinions are peddled as if they represent any significant group of people in this nation. Anyone who does not agree with their often non-scientific ideological framework is labelled as right-wing-fascist irrespective of ground realities surrounding the person or the topic.
What we're witnessing here is a takeover of the American left by a very particular strain of political activism. Like all activists, they too care more about ascendency in the power struggle and aesthetic markers of cultural victory, instead of practical solutions for improving the lives of the population they represent.
> We're not in Europe
If Europe had anywhere near the racial/cultural/religious diversity of the US, then they'd be on their way to a swift turn to the right. Orban is the canary, and the rise of the right in Germany/France/Italy is exactly representative of that phenomenon. Social safety nets do not make for left-liberal ideology. Most of these socialist-paragons demand incredible conformity (scandinavia) and have restrictive abortion laws [2] among other traditionally right-wing traits.
Europeans love to use ethnic subgroups of white as markers for diversity, but the distinctions are much smaller. Culture and religion(or the manner of its rejection) on the other hand seem to be greatly homogenous in European nations.
Each European nation seems to have a secondary ethnic group of ex-colonial immigrants (France : West Africa, England : North (erstwhile) India, Germany : Turks (not colonial)); but they too seem to be othered within their identity as a nation.
The US actually tries a 2 directional cultural exchange with its immigrant groups. The friction and vitriol that you see, has to do with a genuine attempt at mutual integration. It starts with surface level differences like having access to every cuisine to having celebrities of every ethnicity. But, it also goes deeper. America almost has 'I made this [1]' approach towards appropriating cultural products that start elsewhere. To an extent, the reason Americans get so loud about losing their culture, is because American culture is so weakly defined & fluid. On the other hand, you might not see Germans or French people abusing 'immigrants' because unless you fully integrate, you will always be othered. The very rigidity of the culture, makes it 'feel' like a welcoming place to outsiders.
Americans love to self-flagellate, but the country has done better than any other country at developing at identity that isn't racial, religious or cultural in nature. That's not to say that the conditions are great here. But integration and cultural exchange are hard problems, and not-too-bad is about as good as it gets.
I do find your [1] oddly compelling, but not for the reasons you think. Wide political and social change (or progress, if you want to be an optimist) is rarely made through convincing people to fundamentally change, but generational shifts. You are merely finding yourself on the fading side of that shift.
That aside, it's very funny to accuse the left of shifting the overton window after a republican president that pardoned his co-conspirators, called for insurrection and then took top secret documents home - a crime he himself increased the penalty for. So much for law and order.
> is rarely made through convincing people to fundamentally change, but generational shifts
Yes, but that implies a certain 'conflict theory' approach to cultural development.
It is an 'all is fair in love and war' framework, which fully enfranchises the obstructionist policies of Mitch McConnell and the executive overreach of DeSantis which involves banning of CRT in schools. If opinions ossify at adulthood, then the only 2 plans of action are brainwash during schooling or disenfranchise your opponents using every slimy trick in the book.
Never convince, never compromise and certainly never rely on a representative democracy to achieve the closest outcome to consensus. I for one, refuse to espouse this theory.
> republican president
I'm not American or white and I dislike Trump, but the 2016 and 2020 elections solidified my opinion of the internet left being a unrepresentative sample of the left-leaning populace in the US. Democrat voters resoundingly rejected Warren/Sanders in 2020 despite the left's best efforts to convince you otherwise. The absolute media onslaught faced by him was unprecedented, and excellent evidence driven organizations were falling over each other to take 'Not-Trump' stances on every policy he ever suggested.
I used to trust NPR, NYT, ACLU & Scientific organizations a lot more until the 2016 election. Now I have to go read the very papers/stats/documents these organizations source from, with conclusions that often contrast the headlines of these very articles.
That's not just a random bar I set, it's been pretty heavily requested - but everyone knows it wouldn't happen because of prior criticism.
Even Tim Pool invites people to the left of the liberal democratic baseline (that I'd call center-right at best, but I'm also used to a more european notion of left and right) occasionally. Why not the JRE?
The Bernie interview was great, but it was a tactical campaign move. He wasn't going to be too contrarian with Joe when the audience is Joe's.
> Joe can do no wrong and if people dislike him it's because they don't "get it" and they are just being soft.
I find that this is a reaction to a reaction.
I have frequently heard women (and some elitist men) make fun of those who listen to Joe Rogan, long before Joe was every heralded as a hero of the masses. It is only after he started receiving what was perceived to be unjust criticism that people started leaning into the 'with him or against him' polarization.
The one thing I like about Joe Rogan is he doesn't really promote the show that much, so the show is easy to avoid if you don't like it anymore. I used to listen to the podcast very early on, but it got somewhat boring to me, so I stopped listening to it unless there's a guest that interests me.
It is somewhat interesting how he's made it so long with no major scandals. There was the covid stuff, but it was pretty tame to me compared with even run of the mill Twitter drama. I get the sense that he's very good at staying out of situations that are sketchy.
When your comms director chauffeurs you to an interview, outlines how they went over talking points with you, and then in the writeup gives that assessment...
I will disagree with things he says and not personally like that he gives some people access to a huge audience, but I will never discredit the fact that he (and others behind the scenes) have made it this far by being sort of podcasting purists.
There might be only two major changes JRE has gone through content wise during the hundreds of episodes: no more co-host and no live broadcast. That's remarkably good and he had good enough taste to not ever take part in things like mid-show ads (as in stopping the chat in its tracks and starting to read ads).
It's rare that someone can land it so early on and keep that magic recipe going. I bet touring radio shows for his entertainment business helped him gauge what kinds of radio shows were nice vs. the ones that were cumbersome.
True but they are different from ad reads that hosts do during the show. From what I understand they are pre/post-recorded ads that are added in digitally. Not live reads.
> At a long desk in the big main room sits an attractive nurse. She offers us an enhancer of B12 or NAD+, through a shot or an IV.
> I get a shot of NAD+, which is supposed to be good for energy and metabolism. NAD stands for Nicotinamide Adenine Dinucleotide, and I don’t know what the + is. (Actually, I don’t know what any of it is, but the nurse said she takes it, and if you saw this woman, you too would ask for a shot of whatever she’s on.)
Am I the only one cringing at people taking random injections from random strangers claiming they have a semi-medical degree?
My mother sells random old bric-a-brac on eBay, and came across a 1960's era reprint of an early 1900's Sears Catalog which was fascinating to me on several levels - the first being that clearly it was nostalgic for folks in the 60's. For me it was a straight up historical document in that it showed literally anything you could order for your house.
Some things would be little changed from today but obviously others would be very different. One of the weirdest things was the patent medication section. Just things like "Dr Fowler's Feminine Medicine" or stuff like that. Lots of promises to help out illness and zero lists of ingredients. It's absolutely bizarre to me, but I suppose not to everyone.
Even these days its no different. I got injured in a small Indian town and went to a local health center. The nurse never told me what they were injecting into me and frowned when I asked them if it was a tetanus injection or an antibiotic. Their tone changed to You should trust us and not question our experience
I read it to be a syringe or an iv drip. It definitely feels like disparate levels of administering, but going around this studio with an iv seems really inconvenient.
> Later, just before taping, Joe goes over and gets his own jab of NAD+.
Calling it 'good for energy and metabolism' in one of those wishy-washy ideas about how the body works. It's not clear how adding more of one component of metabolism will affect how energy is moved around and released from food.
Well she says this person is a nurse. So this person most likely introduced themselves as a nurse. So they are claiming they are a nurse until it's proven true, right?
I'm not well verse in the US medical system. But in Germany, I get my injections from my doctor for which I can look up their license online.
If I were to take supplements, which I don't, since I consider it to be pseudo-science[1][2], I would get them from my local drug store which has the german equivalent of a FDA license and regular audits.
There are a zillion different substances classified as supplements. It's reductionist and intellectually dishonest to lump them all together. Some are effectively just placebos, or even harmful in high doses. Others appear to have beneficial effects. In many cases those effects are subtle, and might only be noticeable to people who push their bodies to the limit. Unfortunately, this is almost impossible to study through high-quality randomized controlled trials given the numerous confounding factors.
Let's look at it empirically. Among elite athletes, how many take zero supplements? I can't prove that they're getting any benefit but the correlation between performance and the use of certain supplements is so strong that I suspect there's something real going on. (And by supplements I mean real supplements, not PEDS which are an entirely separate category.)
There is a certain type of person who follows all the rules and regulations to the letter, implicitly trusts the authorities, and has an undisguised attitude of scorn towards anyone who does not live and act the same way. I think the relative prevalence of this attitude is a long-standing cultural difference between Germany and the US.
People get B12 injections from nurses all the time. It's extremely common in the US. NAD+ is probably less common, but it's not the nurse's credibility that's recommending the substance. The nurse is just there to inject it safely, something any nurse should be perfectly qualified to do.
Many injections given in the US are administered by people way less qualified than a nurse. A CMA can do quite a lot after just a one-year certificate program.
There are several IV 'spa' places in Austin where people presumably go if they've had too much chardonnay the night before. Apparently carrot juice is too out-dated at this point.
Dressing as a nurse and offering people injections doesn't mean you're a nurse.
In fact, I'd be willing to bet that few nursing associations would look kindly on offering people unprescribed snake oil injections outside of a medical context and with no knowledge of their medical history.
The way this works is the person giving the injections is an actual registered nurse, injecting vitamins from a licensed source, so that's legal. The particular formulation being injected may not have scientifically proven results but that's not required, the customer just needs to be willing to pay for the injection.
I'd be willing to bet many NFL teams (for example) has one or more such nurses. I wouldn't be surprised if various executive suites have such people around, either.
Why would you find it hard to believe Joe Rogan has an actual registered nurse RN working for him? Not like he can't afford one.
My wife currently works as a nurse at a hospital. She's tired of the poor working conditions at the hospital so she's applying to work at an infusion center for better hours and pay.
Test kits are available, lab testing is available in some places, most drugs are easy to "clean up", and some sources, while shady, rely wholly on reputation.
There's also a risk/reward factor - many drugs are incredibly enjoyable, and users feel it's worth the risk.
Yes because generally people who sell shit want to keep selling shit to the same people. So there is an incentive to sell stuff that is as close as possible to what the customer wants. Yes you get cases where people cut coke with fentanyl, but in general this is not how it works.
drug users don't care otherwise they wouldn't be drug users. Look up Krokodil, addicts don't care what it does to them as long as there's a high somewhere in the effects. It basically impossible to stop demand side which is why the (futile) efforts are spent on the supply side.
Inspiring? In what form or sense is excess spending for signaling purposes inspiring. Do you really believe he uses more than 20% of the stuff that’s in there?
Ah yes? It looks to me like a personal gym and it has all the machines you’d want in a good circuit. I myself must use 10-12 machines in my regular weekly routine. I don’t see why he wouldn’t do the same.
The rest of the stuff was aptly described by the author as a museum and it is mostly art or collectibles. How do you propose he make use of it? Considering the volume of guests he has it probably has better attendance than most small museums.
Rogan's sort of like an unfiltered Oprah for men. Some of Rogan's content is hilarious, some of it's interesting and some of it's boring. But I've never listened to a Rogan podcast and felt the urge to be an angry dude behind a keyboard and rage over moron's, a "dumb guy", "misinformation" etc. It's just a long form conversation with a comedian and martial arts analyst. The people that feel that much hate over some casual bro having long talks should switch their Chai Lattes to decaf.
I think you do actually feel the urge to be an angry dude behind a keyboard, because whilst explaining to us just how cool and unbothered you were you couldn't get through half a paragraph without resorting to personally insulting people you disagreed with about Rogan.
What made you think I wasn't bothered by this? The entire reason I posted that was to show that I'm bothered by angry people behind keyboards attacking people's mental capabilities over simple disagreements. I try not to be angry though. Life can be very short and you only have so much energy and focus (finite resource) and the world already has enough suffering. My message is to lighten up and avoid feeding into mobs. I know that sounds corny and I'm probably an angry-dude to you but that's where I'm at in life. My apologies if the snarky coffee quip pissed you off.
And even on HN Joe Rogan succeeds in achieving lots of engagement...
Regardless, I like his interviews and his guests are often very interesting especially when their views go against the grain. Take his recent interview with Alex Berenson for example, the only person ever to litigate himself back into Twitter after a lifelong ban, great interview.
Anyone here remember a page or three in "the glass bead game" about feuilletonism and the rise of interviewing roller skating boxers about politics and politicians about art history?
The problem I have with his stuff is that he used to be a lot more self deprecating in his humour. It made the show more casual - he took him self less seriously - and there was more comedy overall. Now that he seems to take himself so much more seriously it seems like he is just following the money in terms of what content he knows will be popular vs just having interesting guests on his show to have a discussion.
Joe Rogan is more of a journalist than any major news organization, and that is the most worrying thing about it all. The major organizations know this.
How so? Real investigative journalism is a discipline and a craft. There are methodologies, techniques, field history and degrees of masterhood, just like any other profession. This guy has a talk show on the internet.
Most major news organizations are driven more by ad sales than seeking truth. They say what their patrons want them to.
I don't know if I agree with GP, but I understand where the sentiment is coming from. It's not that Rogan is a paragon, it's that the average quality of MSM journalism is low enough he may be able to crawl over the bar.
You are telling people not to make assumptions about how Joe Rogan listeners think, right after speaking for "all of us":
> Almost all of us know Joe is a moron.
I'm quite certain Joe Rogan is above average intelligence, and that people who doubt that are usually abusing Joe's public and unforgiving curiosity which will sometimes lead to basic questions or ridiculous statements - that is the price of curiosity, which clearly we fans are not only willing to pay, but look forward to.
I'm having flashes of the episode where he spent 20 minutes being obstinate and then crushed about the idea that hot sauna air wasnt going to magically protect him from or cure COVID. It was hard to listen to.
Yeah, I wouldn't say Joe is unintelligent. He's an autodidact, and as a result he has gaps in his knowledge because he's followed his interests, rather than a formal curriculum.
I said this in another comment as well—but a lot can be said that he actually lets his guests talk rather than talking over them as is the habit of some.
A profoundly narcissistic people hence:
no humor lest someone laugh at them,
only pretending to project an image,
taking threats to that image violently as seen by your downvotes
This comment is toxic and generalizes millions of people. I encourage you to look at yourself and decide if this is the correct place to spread your judgements.
> Eschew flamebait. Avoid unrelated controversies, generic tangents, and internet tropes.
I have never a podcast from Joe Rogan but I have definitely heard him mentioned around a lot of controversial topics - vaccines, Ivermectin and pushing a certain political ideology. Lets say I want to start on a clean slate, what episode in your opinion truly reflects the best of Joe Rogan?
You're not really helping his image if the comeback you come up with is "they're jealous of Joe Rogan's testosterone". God, I certainly hope you're a teenager.
Wasn't really interested in convincing the "I watched two episodes and he is clearly stupid" crowd to come any closer.
He cheats anyways, he injects it! If that makes you feel any better. And besides, it was not my intention to make anyone envious - it is a well known fact that people who increase their testosterone are more honest and care more for their community then those that do not. I think the science is clear on who to place trust in in this situation!
As someone who doesn't get hero worship at all, your comment history just to defend him baffles me. It's so weird to see a grown man talking about how his idol is so much more manly and deserves trust for that.
For the record, I have basically nothing to say about Joe Rogan himself, I haven't watched anything from him and I probably never will. I'm just reacting to the fans' (as in the unshortened adjective) behavior.
this is the woman who chided twitter employees for concerns about Elon Musk[0] and told them not to come to Substack a couple months it was revealed they are essentially broke[1]
"Depressed? Just get over it". This guy is (edit: in my opinion) an idiot. He's a successful showman but (edit: in my opinion) a moron nonetheless. I've watched a few of his interviews and it always seemed like he's lacking personality - he always tried to copy the behavior of his guests and lacked own viewpoint.
> Be kind. Don't be snarky. Have curious conversation; don't cross-examine. Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community.
I certainly understand not liking Rogan, but your comments aren't really on point. Idiot? Moron? Lacking personality? "always tried to copy the behavior of his guests and lacked own viewpoint"?
These do not appear to be the observations of someone who's actually watched the show.
I appreciate your comment and indeed two of three statements (idiot and moron) lacked opinion wording and were stated as a facts. I have edited my comment in a way that doesn't invalidate yours.
But you're not right regarding me not watching "the show". I've seen the interview with Musk in which Musk said "this stuff doesn't work on me" while pretending to inhale smoke from a pot joint. I've seen Dan Aykroyd interview which was basically Dan Aykroyd advertising his skull-bottled vodka. I've seen dr. Rhonda Patrick episode, dr. David Sinclair episode and maybe 10 to 15 more episodes.
I'm not ashamed to admit that I went through a very brief "this guy is fucking cool!" phase but after really getting to hear what he's got to say, my opinion of him is that he's a behavioral copycat and a moron.
a) The guidelines are meant to govern discourse between people in this community.
b) If I want to call Joe Rogan an idiot because I find his views and lack of intellectual rigour to be commensurate with that of someone who is ignorant and reckless then not sure what the issue is. He is a public figure after all.
Would be possible he lets his guests talk and expose their point of view without the pressure of being immediately “opinion bombarded”?
I would argue it’s mostly a podcast, not a CNN/FoxNews interview. But since I only listen occasionally and feel there’s a lot of emotion attached to this subject ( for some reason ) I might be wrong…
This thread is a treasure trove of people who have skimmed content from JRE yet somehow have more insight into the show than the fans they seem to despise.
Funny, the gutteral emotional reactions seem much stronger from people defending their totally not parasocial streamer relationship!
It's so hard respecting people that still fall for Joe's obvious shtick at this point. A child just asking "why?" over and over would be as interesting, and would likely come without the platforming of altright folks and semi constant COVID misinformation.
Edit: honestly why did I even post in this thread. I guess I should've skimmed other posters comments before writing some of my replies. Yikes.
> platforming altright folks and semi constant COVID misinformation
In other words, he hosts people with viewpoints that some disagree with. And with covid there is like about 6-12 month lag between when something is "misinformation" and it becomes "we always knew this'. Example: The vaccines don't stop transmission. Covid could have been a lab leak. Lockdowns fuck over the working class and kids. Etc, etc, etc...
Most of the time "misinformation" is just a derogatory way to frame something one disagrees with.
So you come here attacking people for not rolling over and accepting "criticism" being emotional, then instantly regret your fairly baseless and sensational attempt to be inflammatory? You have a problem, you aren't intelligent nor wise - you just know some big words.
Is that a problem? Legitimately, we glorify traditional metrics of intelligence, but just because someone might not be able to ace an SAT test doesn't automatically make their perspective invalid or mean they can't be interesting and make art (I feel like Joe Rogan would probably be good on most intelligence metrics though, but in general)
Having a large platform/following does not automatically make someone trustworthy. Low key, why do we live in a country where the opinion of an MMA judge/podcaster influences people so much, it's impossible to endlessly validate any claim.
We may need to transition to a more authoritarian model of speech in which content produced by an individual should be truthful, or we just endlessly play wac-a-mole on the latest rando who gains a following
What a horrifying comment. You can't seriously believe that we should start censoring speech just because some random podcast guest might have stated some medical misinformation. Do you really want the government deciding whom is allowed to speak? Pretty soon they'll decide to censor someone you agree with, for your own good of course. Don't be naive.
it goes to show just how upset it makes people that the JRE podcast exists and is successful. a peculiar insight into how controlling people are that they'd casually suggest we may need "a more authoritarian model of speech" just to combat a weird celebtrity talking to people for 2-3 hours
My point was more complaining about Joe Rogan feels like it misses the forest for the trees. We have very liberal speech laws, and that means people can say stupid shit that some individuals may follow. Holding individuals to account for the consequences of their words is more authoritarian, I don't personally inject myself with horse dewormer so I don't really care
>he always tried to copy the behavior of his guests and lacked own viewpoint.
Have you ever had to make an effort to be overly agreeable with others in order to avoid conflict? I would imagine that a talk show host would make a point of trying to keep things civil in order to keep the "back and fourth" open.
If the guest and the host were immediately pissed at each other, it would be a lot more difficult to carry on a conversation.
No, not "overly". Everything has limits and I hope I won't ever have to pretend to be someone else for the sake of money. His "show" is made to entertain and to make money. Overly quickly turns into overenthusiastically and fake. He chooses to be a fake while pretending to be Joe Rogan. And Joe Rogan was someone else in every episode I've seen.
I think Neil Young tried to cancel him right? Young is from a different generation than me, but I had the notion he'd be more free-speak/free-thought/don't trust the man minded. Maybe that is what happens when a pharma exec buys your catalog? Or was that misinformation?
What concerns me about Joe Rogan, and what this article helped solidify, is not necessarily his views, but the power he has as one person.
In my opinion he has taken some problematic view points, but others would agree with him more, and many would say he just plays devil's advocate and likes to talk hypotheticals and dig into interesting topics. I don't think any of this really matters.
The issue is that the views come from one guy, get amplified in some man-cave banter with a few guys paid by him, and then broadcast to an audience "larger than Belgium". This isn't normal. Media companies have layers of editors, they have at least some diversity, a woman will hopefully look at a story or script before it goes out, sometimes even a lawyer might tell them to tone it down a bit. Even celebrities with big followings on social media are likely to have more input on many of their postings than Rogan does on his broadcasts.
A bit of a filter is a good thing for everyone, whether it's trusted friends who can and do tell you when you're wrong, an editor at work, a legal team, whatever. It's also honest. I think Joe Rogan could use a filter.
You know, I don't even particularly like Joe Rogan or agree with him on many issues, but I'd say that your mentality here is just about everything wrong with big corporate media companies.
Every opinion that deviates slightly outside of the current zeitgeist has to be watered-down, censored, scoffed down upon, and diminished.
Everything has to be reviewed by bloodsucking lawyers rather than talking like a normal human being.
Somehow a lone white man is not allowed to express his opinion without a layer of ''diversity'' to somehow make it acceptable.
Joe has a following bigger than Belgium precisely because the rest of the media is such a bland and fake piece of shit for the reasons you mentioned. If you want to point the finger at anybody for the success of Joe Rogan, look in the mirror buddy.
> This isn't normal. Media companies have layers of editors, they have at least some diversity, a woman will hopefully look at a story or script before it goes out,
Jesus Christ, do you understand what you're saying here? A man can't speak and be heard without a woman going over it first?
I find this take really surprising. He has a huge reach, but you kinda need to go out of your way to watch him, and the people that do, do it exactly because of the lack of filter.
If I wanted to listen to something sanitized and approved by a legal team I would just watch CNN or Fox News.
You seem awfully concerned about someone who doesn't fit the usual media profiles. You may want to look at the rankings of more conventional shows. They've been dwindling for decades. People are really, really tired of that stuff. Trust in them is vanishingly low, below even Congress and lawyers. Diversity? He literally is diversity. You just spent a whole post talking about how he's different from the usual legacy media mouthpieces.
Also... how do you know he doesn't get plenty of input?
> This isn't normal.
Literally no popular media figure is remotely close to normal.
> What concerns me [...] the power he has as one person
What concerns me is that the traditional media are not able to make interesting podcasts that connect as well with most people.
Don't blame Joe Rogan for what he does, blame everybody else for not being able to do the same.
Joe Rogan has no power by himself, only by traditional media not wanting to let people talk freely on the radio anymore. No one runs unedited interviews anymore. Everything is massaged into the viewpoint that the journalist already has.
Joe Rogan is able to produce a podcast in which the topics covered and the tones used are not really dictated by advertisers. This is as good and independent as it gets. The podcast should be a prime example of what the web should be about: genuine content free from higher up control and censorship.
The problem seems to be that you don't like this kind of content and would much prefer "safer" things to be popular, but that's exactly how we get harmless TV shows and meaningless music ruining the fun for everyone.
There are always people like this and Joe is not the most problematic we’ve had to be honest.
Yes he’s never taken his show as a responsibility/burden to seek out some absolute truth to to guide men to an utopian future through his influence - but in those respects he would have likely failed had he fallen for that trap - the whole point of his show is this is who he is and he is not trying to make YOU do anything (maybe exercise ?). This is just something he does and he does his best not to think about it.
I don't want this great show to be influenced by what other people find problematic. Joe Rogan himself has an opinion regarding what is a problem and what is not. Since it is his show, he should run it the way he wants and presumably he will say something when he has a problem with it. This has always been the case.
We can't pretend like all media companies care about promoting balanced, thoughtful and inclusive commentary. That's just not reality.
There's a ton of money to be made pushing agendas and peddling hate. And then you run into the age-old question: who controls the filter? How do you regulate controversial content?
> A bit of a filter is a good thing for everyone, whether it's trusted friends who can and do tell you when you're wrong, an editor at work, a legal team, whatever. It's also honest. I think Joe Rogan could use a filter.
Cool, who do you suggest should do the filtering? We could create a ministry of censorship.
His audience disagrees that he needs a filter. The filtered content you are talking about is abundant, authentic content is scarce, that's why he pulls the audience size he pulls. His reach would be smaller if we took the filters off other sources.
Joe doesn’t need a filter. Maybe if he wanted to appeal to more people, he could use one. But he doesn’t really care about being controversial it seems. Let people make up their own minds I say, the same way you have.
I have seen "problematic" viewpoints on CNN and Fox News, both of which have audiences orders of magnitude larger than Rogan. Should we "filter" those also? Should we filter you too for advocating for filters on others?
You inherently infantilize the public when you assume they agree with, or are indoctrinated by, media they consume. Adults are capable of disagreeing with long form content they consume.
What is more damaging are the sound bytes and headlines that get amplified on short form social media like Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit, which offer conclusions and misinformation and not conversations.
Joe Rogan is a bit of an idiot, but his audience mostly knows that. They listen to him because there are nuggets of truth in his podcast that most MSM won't report.
Rogan is claiming 11M listeners per episode, CNN and Fox News ratings peak around 1M for their primetime shows. I'm not sure how to make a total viewership comparison, but it appears like they're in the approximately same scale.
Yes, please someone get him a woman, christ a lawyer, something, someone to review his podcast! We can't allow someone to simply speak their mind, think of what might happen if people got the hang of that!
The amount of authoritarianism in this comment is staggering
Of course, the exact some criticism could be made of anyone that famous. Obama for instance had no editors, I doubt Bernie Sander's has a woman or a lawyer pre-approve his opinions either...
One of the things I respect about Joe Rogan (I am not really a listener unless someone wants to discuss a particular show in my social circle) is how often he says (and seems to mean) "don't listen to me, wtf do I know" or words to that effect.
I respect someone who seems to honestly admit they do not know, and that it's ok to not be sure. And I respect anyone who encourages others to think for themselves (though that failed pretty drastically with Covid).
Compare that any politician who is 100% sure of X until X is only supported by 49% of people.
I am not sure why this was down voted, as sexism work both ways. Asking a woman to review a man's content is the same thing as asking a man to review a woman's content, and most people would not be fine with the second.
Absolutely, most people wouldn't be fine with the second, because most people have grown up in a society where men have held the overwhelming majority of positions of privilege and power. When we're talking about a woman taking looking at a man's work what we're really saying is "That work environment might be so dominated by men that there isn't even a single woman in the office who could provide a different perspective due to her lived experience". The counter "Well a man should look over this work" invests a world in which a workplace could be so dominated by women that they would lack even a single man to offer an opinion on a piece of work. The idea that a reporter at a news organization could have an entire management chain above them of exclusively men isn't far-fetched. The counter - a woman only chain of management would be incredibly rare.
It's important that we see the world as it is, rather than as some theoretical thing out that where we can just plug in different variables and go "Well now look!"
Why should we even go for opinion of opposite gender? What's next, ensure that all political groups offer an opinion? All socioeconomic classes? All age groups? I'd say opinion of average man and woman are much closer than other splits.
Errr... yes. We should basically be aiming to take into account a wide range of experiences and perspectives when forming our opinions, and by surrounding himself with a clique of bro-y young men Rogan provides a very narrow perspective on the world, and arguably a big part of the reason he's so popular is because he doesn't really challenge the perspectives of his audience.
We have a wide variety of media outlets to expose experience of different groups. That fulfils what you're looking for. You can find opinions of pretty much any group no matter what.
What your proposal would do, most groups wouldn't get a chance to translate their experiences. Biggest and/or loudest group would dominate the narrative. Everyone else would be tuned out to bigger or smaller degree.
Actually, we already had your solution. Back in TV-dominated era. Only vetted content would make it to the public. With marginal groups silenced. Well, those marginal groups just started tiny podcasts to tell their stories :)
What do you think would happen if you take those tiny podcasts and force them to act like big media of the old days? Can you silence some dude streaming from his kitchen?
I mean, that's pretty much what the media does. They claim they do more fact checking and take an unbias stance, but that's been disproven too many times.
I don't see anyone getting worked up that Dan Rather has "too much power as one person"
The filter is in your brain. If you need a team of editors to sift through and analyze thoughts before they reach your brain YOU are the problem and YOU CANNOT THINK properly.
How is a filter (a sort of censorship or constraint) more honest than nothing one? I can see it being more thruthful (and also less), but honest seems off.
It's hilarious for me personally to see the "I trust Joe Rogan more than I trust Joe Biden" slogans, because I've never listened to a single episode, and I only really know him from the 90s cult sitcom "News Radio" ;)
I will say that the Jimmy James Macho Business Donkey Wrestler reading is one of my fav things ever to be broadcast on American television!
> Media companies have layers of editors, they have at least some diversity, a woman will hopefully look at a story or script before it goes out, sometimes even a lawyer might tell them to tone it down a bit
Sometimes editors and a corporate machine behind the news isn’t the best thing.
Take, for example, Amy Robach. A CBS reporter who wanted to air the Jeffery Epstein story years before he was arrested for the second time. Then ABC tipping off CBS and the leaker being fired.
There’s also the Chris Cuomo basement scandal.
Or Brian Williams lying about his experience covering Iraq.
Or Glenn Greenwald and Bari Weiss being pushed out of their newspapers.
Or studies showing that the media covered Russia’s invasion of Ukraine far more than the US invasion of Iraq.
Or censoring of the Hunter Biden laptop story. Also haven’t seen much about the contents of the diary in the mainstream press…
The media has failed time and time again on what I outlined above and much more. They have an agenda, be it left or right, that is larger than any one person and are largely beholden to advertisers and whatnot.
I applaud independent media. There are a lot of people doing really great work on substack. Jimmy Dore, for example, does amazing reporting and really shows the bias of the media.
People like Alex Berenson, Matt Taibi, Glenn Greenwald, etc are doing really great investigative reporting that I once respected mainstream outlets for.
Just because someone has a large audience doesn’t mean they should be censored. Talking to people about things for hours is invaluable and Rogan does a great job on his show.
But at some point it occurred, "Shouldn't at some point, if we're listening to all this that, we stop being a dumb guy who doesn't know anything and actually have opinion / challenge some of these things with some facts / solid ideas?"
But I never saw that happen, and as time went on the "I don't know" excuses just felt ... more and more insufficient, dumb by choice, or just excuses.
At some point just being "dumb" and listening to every rando person makes you susceptible to / a target of a bunch of horrible randos with bad ideas ... An open approach is admirable, but not learning along the way is not.